The Book of Love
by HardlyFatal
Summary: Modern AU. Similar premise to EotB. Brienne doesn't think much of love. Neither does Jaime. Then a chance meeting and a cross-country road trip force them to reevaluate what they thought they wanted out of life. Turns out, it was each other the whole time. COMPLETE
1. the book of love is long

Author's Note: Hi everyone! This story is for my wonderful friend, AsbestosMouth, who requested a Brienne/Jaime story featuring a certain trope that I won't reveal, so I don't spoil a future chapter for you.

The title is from a wonderful song by 2Cellos, Il Libro Del'Amore. I hope you enjoy it :)

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 **Brienne**

The airport was a madhouse; of course it was, only a few days before Christmas.

Brienne was due back tomorrow. She was supposed to have left this morning, but but she'd wanted to wring every moment she could out of her time with her father at their place in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She saw him so seldom, now that she was living up in New Hampshire, and he'd sounded so unwell and lonely that she'd eked out a mini-holiday in between performances.

When she'd called to reschedule her flight, she'd been told that they could only put her on standby. At the time, the risk had seemed reasonable. Now, however… it was seven o'clock at night and a Nor'easter was brewing, making it doubtful any flights would be leaving that night, even if she could get on one…

She stood nervously in line at the ticket counter of the last airline. She'd been to all the rest, with the same response: we're sold out, and with the storm, might not be going at all. This one was her last hope.

Bored, nervous, Brienne trained her gaze on the man in front of her. In particular, his contours. He was tall— not as tall as she, but who was?— and _very_ nicely built. He wore snug jeans, dark brown desert boots, and a close-fitting green Henley shirt that lovingly outlined his very fit torso.

 _Those shoulders are magnificent,_ she thought, enjoying the visual of rounded muscle capping them, and how his trapezius sloped up to meet his bronzed neck. His hair was that gorgeous mix of caramel and sand, with the odd lemony highlight, that came only from being a natural blond. It was a bit long, in that floppy way that was trending, with the slightest tendency to curl around his ears.

The long sleeves were pushed up to reveal equally bronzed forearms dusted with golden hair. When he glanced at his watch, she noticed two things: the enticing way the sinews and muscles rippled in said forearm, and that the limb ended abruptly at the wrist instead of a hand, as was typical.

 _Hm,_ Brienne thought, _I was not expecting that._

It made him interesting, instead of just another handsome stranger that would never look twice at her, unless it were to marvel at her size and lack of beauty. Judging by the quality of his clothing, and the leather weekend bag at his feet, he was well-off, and rich people tended not to have debilitating injuries happen to them. Or at least, not to be remedied in some comprehensive way. Shouldn't he have some sort of elaborate bionic hand to replace the organic one?

The line inched forward. She came to stand where he'd been a moment before, and a tantalizing hint of bay rum lingered in the air. Brienne's eyes flew back to the stranger in front of her, this time studying his neck. It was strong and tanned, and if he'd used bay rum after shaving… she allowed herself to imagine, just for a moment, pressing her nose to his throat and inhaling. Her stomach tightened.

 _This is ridiculous,_ she told herself, becoming attracted to a man whose face you haven't even seen. It shouldn't matter; her own face could be described as 'nothing special' if one were being particularly kind, and 'fucking ugly' if one were not. It was entirely possible that he was a butterface: gorgeous in body, but his face…

The line moved again; this time it was the man's turn to harass the airline representative. Brienne duly stepped forward once more.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't issue you a boarding pass. The flight was overbooked and you and several others have had to be bumped."

"Is it possible to just get a downgrade from first class to business, or economy? I'll take whatever you've got."

Oh, his voice was like caramel, too, smooth and rich. Now Brienne was dying to see his face. Could fate be so cruel as to make him hideous, with a body and voice like that? It had seen fit to do it to _her_ , after all, so why not him?

"I'm sorry, sir. There are no seats left for the Manchester flight."

Brienne's ears perked, at that, since Manchester was her destination, too. Her spirits sank to hear it was booked, but perhaps Boston…?

"What about Boston?" asked the man, seemingly reading her mind.

"Those are all booked too, sir. And if the weather worsens, they might become canceled."

"The weather's fine," he protested, turning to glance out the windows at the cold, but perfectly clear, night that had fallen outside.

Brienne caught her breath at the sight of his profile, brief though it had been. Butterface? No. That profile belonged on the back of an ancient Greek coin: noble brow, firm chin, and the best nose she'd ever seen in her life, looking as if it had been sculpted by the hand of a master.

It seemed like Adonis was making a 21st-century appearance in the Raleigh airport.

 _Well,_ she thought with humor, _that_ _'_ _s certainly not fair. Save a little hotness for the rest of us._

"The weather in New England is _not_ fine, however," the airline rep told him, then added, "sir," belatedly. "And that is what counts."

"Thanks anyway," the man grumbled, and strode away.

Brienne got one last glimpse at that amazing profile before schooling herself to look forward and offer the representative a smile.

"I overheard that there's nothing for Manchester or Boston," she said, "but what about Providence?"

She could drive the rest of the way, if she had to. Rhode Island to New Hampshire was only about two hours away.

The airline rep shook her head.

"Hartford?"

"No, I'm sorry."

"New York?" Now the potential drive was getting long— New York City to Manchester would be four and a half hours.

"Not that, either."

Grasping at straws, Brienne said, "Philadelphia?"

The rep shook her head. "Everything north of Washington, DC is either booked or canceled."

Brienne's shoulders slumped in defeat. "I understand. Thank you."

She turned away from the desk and trudged away, wondering what to do next. Her orchestra had a performance tomorrow night, the biggest one of the holiday season. She was first cello. Missing it was not an option. Perhaps she could rent a car?

Off she went, down the escalator and down a hallway, past the baggage claim, to the car rental area. There were a half-dozen agencies there, all of them mobbed. She was not alone in her resignation to drive to where she needed to go. Gripping the handle of her suitcase, she got into line number two of the evening and settled in to wait.

An hour later, she was staring at the car rental agent in dismay. "None? You have no cars left? At all?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. There was a run on them, with all the cancellations." The man looked apologetic as he glanced from his monitor back to her. "You can try the other agencies, but…"

Brienne turned to look at the other desks, only to find people milling around, their faces disgruntled.

"I'm sorry, sir—" "I've just rented the last one, ma'am—" she heard to her left and right.

"Thank you," she told the agent, her voice toneless. She pulled her suitcase along behind her and tried to think what she could do.

Option A: stay at the airport overnight and try to get a flight in the morning.

Option B: find a hotel room and try to get a flight in the morning.

Option C: call around to other car rentals outside the airport and see if they had any cars.

Option D: sit down and cry her eyes out.

None stuck out to her as preferable to any of the others. One thing was certain: she had to let her conductor know she might not be able to make it. With a sigh, she pulled out her cell phone and located him in her contact list, then tapped 'call'.

"Brienne," he said upon answering. "Since I know you went to North Carolina this week, this had better be a call to share with me that you've had a restorative and relaxing holiday and are now ready to perform the fuck out of our program tomorrow night."

"Hi, Tyrion," she mumbled. "I wish that were the case."

His sigh gusted down to the line to her. "What happened? The Nor'easter? I had a feeling. The electricity's gone out here a few times already tonight."

"I'm really sorry," she told him. "I tried everything; Manchester is impossible, but also Boston, Providence, Hartford…"

"Rent a car?"

"None left. Not a single one." She paused, feeling horrible. Unprofessional, unreliable, and basically the worst person ever. "I'm really sorry, Tyrion."

He surprised her by laughing. "Brienne, you sound as if you're about to commit hari-kiri because you've dishonored yourself and your family".

"Did you say 'Tyrion'?" asked a voice to the side. There was a gentle touch on her elbow, and Brienne spun to find herself face-to-glorious-face with the handsome man she'd surreptitiously lusted after earlier.

"…yes?" she replied, feeling a bit stunned to look at him straight on. God, he was gorgeous. He had cheekbones you could slice beef with, slashing golden eyebrows, and the most intensely green eyes she'd ever seen. "Hold on, Tyrion." She placed her hand over the receiver.

"Not Tyrion Lannister?" the man inquired.

"…yes?" she repeated.

The man smiled, a stretch of well-shaped lips over straight white teeth that had her knees going weak.

"That's my brother. Can I talk to him?"

"Um." Brienne stared down at the phone, and then slowly held it out to him. Somewhere along the way, things had gotten away from her.

"Tyrion, it's Jaime. No, I don't know her. I just overheard her say 'Manchester', and your name, and how many poor bastards out there are named 'Tyrion'?"

He fell silent, listening to his brother, and then his face darkened.

"I left Miami this afternoon. Raleigh was the first available flight." Pause. "Yeah, I know, but I couldn't take any more of our sister's warm hospitality." His face smoothed into a bland mask. "Anyway, whose phone have I co-opted? Brienne, you say?" He glanced at her, his eyes dancing. "Hi, Brienne. Nice to meet you. I'm Jaime."

He started to hold out his right hand and then scowled when he saw he didn't _have_ a right hand.

"Pardon my left," he said, "but I have nothing else to shake with."

"It's fine," she mumbled, shaking his left hand awkwardly. His palm was warm, a little calloused. It sent tingles shooting down to her wrist.

"She's one of your musicians?" this Jaime said, returning to the call. "Your _best_ musician? Then you definitely need her."

Brienne's ears started to burn, as they always did when she was embarrassed. She hated to be discussed in the third person when she was right there, and Tyrion's compliment made her uncomfortable. Nitpicky little bugger he might be, but Tyrion was also the most vocally supportive conductor she'd ever worked with, unstinting with praise if the musician deserved it. Brienne being the compulsive perfectionist she was, Tyrion ended up praising her quite often. It never got easier for her to hear.

Surfacing from her awkwardness, she noticed Tyrion's brother studying her, from the tips of her knee-high riding boots up past her dark tights and the long sweater tunic she wore over them. His gaze traveled over the cashmere pashmina she was using in lieu of a winter coat and, finally, over her face.

He took in every last irregularity, every last poorly-shaped feature. She knew he saw the way her nose pinched in weirdly behind her nostrils, and how big her forehead was, and the stubborn jut of her chin. It was clear he'd noticed the pale eyelashes that matched her white-blond hair, and how it curled wildly around her head since she hadn't bothered to straighten or even brush it after that morning's shower.

"It so happens that I was able to get a car," he told his brother in answer to some question. "Yes, I'd be glad to drive together with Brienne up to Manchester."

Their eyes locked; Brienne could not look away. She could hardly breathe.

"Oh, but—"

"No, it's no trouble at all," Jaime said to Tyrion, answering Brienne's protest as well. "I'd be glad for the company, in fact. It would be a long, lonely trip by myself."

Silence as Tyrion yapped at him.

"Great, it's settled! See you tomorrow. Or the next day. Whenever we get there. No guarantees."

He tapped the phone to hang up, ending the call mid-squawk, and handed it back to Brienne with another gleaming smile.

"So!" he said. "Shall we get going?"


	2. no one can lift the damned thing

**Jaime**

Jaime was damned glad to get a car, especially when he saw how many people were being turned away once they'd all been rented. He'd picked the worst possible destination, it seemed, when he'd left Miami. At the time, he hadn't cared where he was going. As long as it was away from his sister, her drunk of a husband, and their psychopath of a son.

Their other two children had wisely opted to remain in their boarding schools for the holiday, and Jaime envied them fiercely for their foresight. Lannister family holidays were invariably awful; tense affairs, fraught with _sotto voce_ comments and barbed witticisms at others' expenses.

He'd thought— hoped— that this year might be different. Their father had died a few months earlier, and Jaime hadn't seen Cersei or Robert or Joffrey in over a year. With Tywin gone, there was a chance that the venom that always festered between them all had been lanced and could now drain away. Perhaps, with time, they could even learn to… be kind to each other.

Alright, that was far-fetched. But maybe they could at least pretend to like each other? Feign niceness?

…oh, who was he kidding?

Once he'd escaped to Raleigh, he found himself with a new predicament: where the hell was he going? He could return to New York City, but… it was Christmas. He didn't want to spend it alone. He certainly didn't want to spend it with one of the empty-headed socialites who were constantly trying to fling themselves at him. He'd seen their attraction in his younger years, but eventually, he had — to his horror— become bored with pert bottoms and round tits and flawless faces, all owing more to the surgeon's knife than any fortunate natural inheritance.

There was a plastic sameness to all of them, the same tiny noses and rosebud lips and manicured eyebrows. They looked like Barbie dolls— some might have a different skin tone or hair or eye color, but the faces were so similar they just blurred into each other, boring and easily forgotten.

Even with those who had won the genetic lottery, such as himself and his twin, Cersei, there was no guarantee that the interior would match the exterior. If anything, such exteriors were proof it was just the opposite; Cersei might as well wear a sign around her neck that said, 'danger, here there be dragons' so the unwitting had fair warning. And he was not devoid of his own issues. The shallow playboy personality he'd cultivated in his teens and twenties had given way to that of a louche, slightly embittered amputee in his thirties.

And now he was knocking on forty— though, thank god, he was still five years from it— and apparently embarking on an existential crisis. What was he doing with his life? What did he have to show for his thirty-five years walking the planet? What had he created? Would he leave anything behind besides some wealth that would only benefit other already-wealthy people?

He decided, while on the plane from Miami, that he wanted to see Tyrion. His little brother had given the rest of their family a metaphorical _and_ physical middle finger before fucking off to live in New Hampshire, of all places, putting his music degree to good use by becoming the conductor of a local orchestra. Recently, he'd married, and just last week had informed Jaime that he was to be an uncle for the fourth time.

He felt a pang of loneliness, and an urge to… belong somewhere. His Manhattan apartment was a carefully decorated and curated mausoleum, or so it felt, all sleek angles and hard, shiny surfaces. His life, too, was carefully curated, with his secretary making all of his arrangements, filling his schedule with the meetings and conferences he needed to keep Casterly Enterprises one of the leading management corporations in the world.

It was, he realized, immensely dull.

He thought of Tyrion's messy life; how he lived in a small city where it snowed a lot, with a tempestuous Latina as his fiancée and now future mother of his child. When he spoke on the phone with them, he heard dogs barking in the background, the TV blaring, doors slamming. Often as not, there was music playing, or someone singing, as his brother had an open-door policy toward everyone in his orchestra, and his musicians were in and out of his place all day long.

It was chaotic, and disorganized, and Jaime wanted it so badly his chest ached.

So when he got to Raleigh, he knew what to do. The challenge, he soon realized, was to make it happen. No flights available at this later hour, especially with a storm brewing, so he went to rent a car and got the last SUV at the Budget counter.

Jaime had been shrugging into his shearling jacket, about to head outside and find his rental, when he heard a female voice say 'Manchester'. It was a lovely voice, as voices went, a thrumming alto instead of the more usual soprano, and he turned to find its owner. Then he heard the voice say 'Tyrion' and he had gone on higher alert. Was she talking to _his_ Tyrion? How many Tyrions could there be in the world? For the world's sake, Jaime hoped, not many. Just one was plenty. More than enough, really.

He heard her say it again, and spinning, he found her: a long drink of water, some might call her, immensely tall for a woman, or even for a man— she looked like she might top his own six-foot-two. She was not pretty, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she was _interesting_ , and that counted for more, Jaime felt. He bet he could look at her for hours— days, even— and not get tired of it, not once.

Her hair was a silky halo of platinum curls that actually looked natural, and her eyes—

Her _eyes_ —

God, they were lovely. The most beautiful eyes he'd ever seen, dark as sapphires, but flecked with light, silvery blue. She looked like she had galaxies in her eyes, the entirety of the universe swirling in her gaze.

He felt dizzy for a moment, as if he'd taken a hard knock to the head. Blinking, Jaime composed himself, and then set about invading her privacy.

"Did you say 'Tyrion'?" he asked the woman, lightly touching her arm. She spun around and he found himself the recipient of her full attention. Those eyes looked at him, and for a moment he felt pinned by them, like a butterfly to velvet.

"…yes?" she replied, clearly surprised by his interruption. "Hold on, Tyrion," she said into the phone, and covered the mouthpiece.

"Not Tyrion Lannister?" Jaime persisted.

"…yes?" She was confused. It looked good on her, drawing her fair eyebrows together over that fascinatingly weird nose she had. He couldn't keep from smiling.

"That's my brother. Can I talk to him?"

"Um." She handed the phone over, a bit reluctantly, and he didn't blame her. It was weird, he supposed, to let a stranger co-opt your phone conversation.

He took it and raised it to his ear.

"Tyrion, it's Jaime."

"You know Brienne?"

 _Brienne_ , he repeated to himself. _A sensual name._ It put him in mind of long weekends spent in bed, snowed in, wrapped in blankets and watching old movies.

"No, I don't know her. I just overheard her say 'Manchester', and your name, and how many poor bastards out there are named 'Tyrion'?"

"What are you doing in Raleigh?" demanded his brother. "I thought you were languishing in Miami."

"I left Miami this afternoon. Raleigh was the first available flight."

"That's unusually reckless, for you."

"Yeah, I know, but I couldn't take any more of our sister's warm hospitality." He couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice, but tried his best to keep his face from showing it. "Anyway, whose phone have I co-opted? Brienne, you say?" He glanced at her. She looked adorably uncertain, and he couldn't keep from grinning again. "Hi, Brienne. Nice to meet you. I'm Jaime."

He went to shake her hand, noticing too late that he'd held out his stump. Should have worn the prosthesis but he hated the damned thing; it chafed his wrist raw, and he was sick to death of trying to pretend for Cersei that he was still whole. When he left Miami, he'd chucked the prosthesis into his bag, done with it. At least for the time being.

"Pardon my left," he told her, hoping she would not be repelled, "but I have nothing else to shake with."

"It's fine," she murmured, and reached out with her own left hand. Her hand was large, capable, and soft, except for some intriguing little calluses on her fingertips. He wondered where she'd gotten them.

"She's my first cellist," Tyrion was yammering into his ear. "Most talented and reliable person in the whole orchestra."

"She's one of your musicians?" Jaime said, for her benefit more than for his own. "Your _best_ musician? Then you definitely need her."

"Stop trying to embarrass her," Tyrion snapped. "She's shy. And—"

He began rattling off a list of reasons why Jaime should be nice to her, as if he had to be told why he shouldn't treat a complete stranger like an asshole.

He ignored it, preferring to give her a thorough one-over. She had a unique style of dress, one that managed to compliment and camouflage her figure at the same time. She had magnificent legs, displayed to perfection in tall boots and painted-on leggings, but then the rest of her was hidden under a long, shapeless sweater-dress-type item. And instead of a coat, she had some fuzzy blanket thing around her neck and shoulders.

Everything about her was tactile, he realized, from the mirror finish of her boots to the stretchiness of the leggings to the rough weave of the sweater to the kitten-like plushness of her blanket. Jaime was seized with the impulse to _touch_ her, to stroke over all her surfaces and learn what she felt like.

"—it's a long haul, but what about driving? Could you give her a lift as far as New York? She'll have an easier time getting back up here from there." Tyrion paused. "Or you could come up for Christmas? We haven't seen you since the wedding."

It had been a long four months without his brother; irreverent, annoying, impossibly smart and incredibly talented, Jaime loved Tyrion like he loved few people. He even liked Shae, Tyrion's mad wife. She scared him, but she was mostly harmless. She adored Tyrion, and for that alone, Jaime would love her forever.

"It so happens that I was able to get a car," Jaime therefore told his brother.

"You'll come up, then? And bring Brienne?"

"Yes, I'd be glad to drive together with Brienne up to Manchester."

His eyes looked with hers, and for a moment it was like the rest of the world receded. His heart gave a hard thump in his chest. She was staring at him in terror, or perhaps lust, her lips parting in surprise.

"Oh, but—" she began.

"Are you sure it's no trouble?" asked Tyrion, for once trying to not impose.

Jaime was not going to give her the opportunity to wriggle away. He hadn't had a reaction like this to a woman in a long time. Years.

"No, it's no trouble at all. I'd be glad for the company, in fact. It would be a long, lonely trip by myself."

"Drive carefully. Don't speed. And _don_ _'_ _t_ make a pass at her. She's shy," Tyrion repeated.

"Great, it's settled! See you tomorrow. Or the next day. Whenever we get there." Jaime blew right past his brother's warnings. "No guarantees," he added, meaning it in regards to the pass-making as well as any arrival times.

"Dammit, Jaime—"

Jaime hung up on him, and gave the phone back to Brienne with what he hoped was his most disarming smile.

"So!" he said. "Shall we get going?"


	3. it's full of charts

**Brienne**

Numbly, Brienne followed her new companion, Jaime, toward the exit and the parking lot of rental cars. She was not entirely sure how her plans— such as they'd been— had become co-opted by him and her conductor, but it appeared she was going to embark on a cross-country trip with a complete stranger who just happened to be the best-looking human she'd ever clapped eyes on.

This could only end in disaster.

The pressure-sensitive doors slid open at Jaime's approach, and Brienne took a moment to unfold and re-wrap herself in the sky-blue pashmina. Now swathed head to waist in its warm, thick folds, she was ready to head out into the brisk winter air.

He turned to her just as she stepped out behind him, his mouth open to say something, but took one look at her and fell silent, looking like a lightly stunned haddock.

Self-conscious, she glanced down at herself. She probably looked ridiculous, like a refugee or a Russian grandma, with the cashmere over her head and draped around her. But coats were so bulky on planes, and the pashmina was really convenient, able to be used like a blanket _or_ a scarf _or_ a shawl, and—

After a moment, he actually shook his head, like he was trying to shake some sense back into himself.

"Were you going to say something?" she prompted him.

"I can't remember," he replied, and turned back around, squinting against the street lamps illuminating the parking lot for their car. "We've got an SUV… somewhere."

"Oh, thank god," Brienne muttered. "I was worried you'd only managed a sub-compact and I'd end up eating my knees the entire trip."

He laughed. The sound rippled over her like silk dragging along her skin, and she felt goosebumps rise even under her bulky tunic and the pashmina.

"You're all legs, like me," Jaime agreed, his gaze warm as he took in her tights once more. "I'm glad I got there when there was still some choice."

"Me, too," she replied faintly. This was… not good. Worse than not good. It was terrible. How was she supposed to sit in a car for two days with him? With his smile and his eyes and his bay rum and—

"Here." He compared the license plate to the number on the key fob, then pressed the button, and the lights blinked. "I'll drive first?"

"Sure," Brienne agreed, and opened the back door to stow her suitcase, but then stopped. "Before I get in, I just want you to know… I know self-defense. I _teach_ self-defense. So if you have any intentions to hurt me, you should be aware that I have no problem tearing off your scrotum and stretching it over your head like a ski mask."

Jaime stared at her over the roof of the car. For a moment, he looked absolutely shocked. Then he looked amused, if the way his lips were twitching were any indication, but he managed to get himself under control. Finally, he spoke.

"My plan is to keep my scrotum right where it is, so you have nothing to worry about."

She nodded shortly at him, and put her suitcase in the back seat, carefully wedged in the foot well so it wouldn't shake around. She became aware that he was watching her.

"Got something fragile in there?" he asked.

"My violin," she replied, closing the back door and opening the front. "The cello is too big to tote around if I don't really need it."

"You could… not bring any instrument at all…?" he suggesting, installing himself behind the steering wheel and inserting the key.

As the car roared to life, Brienne stared at him. "No instrument? At all? But what if I needed to play?"

He slammed his door shut, but his gaze was fixed on her. "What if you _needed_ to play? Brienne, people— _most_ people, in fact— go about their daily business, _every_ day, without access to some sort of musical instrument. I think you could manage a few days without one."

He didn't understand. "But if I needed to play, and didn't have at least the violin… if there were a piano, or a guitar, I could make do… but what if there weren't? If I needed to play… no, it's too risky."

"What are these desperate musical needs that you can't bear to risk?" he asked, amusement lifting his mouth into one of those smiles that made her itchy. And horny. "Do they occur often? Is treatment available? I hate to think of you suffering."

Brienne took her time fastening her seat belt, annoyed at his teasing.

"I need to play. Every day, at least for a little while. Only an hour. Maybe two, depending on how bad a day it's been."

He looked her over yet again. This was the third thorough going-over he'd given her; what was left for him to inspect? Hadn't he seen all of her he needed to? She gritted her teeth and prayed to all the gods that she'd be able to keep her temper.

"Well," he said at last, turning to face forward, "we'll have plenty of time for you to explain it to me." He tossed his cell phone into her lap. "Fire up the GPS, Mozart, and let's get moving."

Brienne twitched even as she began tapping and typing on his phone. "If you have to call me by a famous composer's name— which I absolutely do not deserve, since in comparison I am an amateur and a hack— then at least call me Dvorak, or Prokofiev, or Shostakovich."

"I have no idea who any of those people are," said Jaime blithely, backing out of the parking space and steering them out of the parking lot.

Brienne twitched again. She turned to deliver to him a lecture on the prominent composure of cello-centric pieces when she noticed the faintest smile on his lips. He was just trying to rile her up, and for a moment, she was absolutely furious.

And turned on.

And that made her even more angry. She stared down at his phone, fighting the impulse to roll down the window and toss it out, or perhaps pelt him in the head with it.

She did none of those things.

Instead, she took out her own phone, put in her earbuds, and played Don Quixote by Richard Strauss. After forty-five minutes of that, she felt restored to a more even mental keel.

"I can drive whenever you feel sleepy," she told him after another hour.

"I'm fine," he said, and flashed her a smile.

After another hour, however, they were approaching Norfolk, and Brienne was starting to feel her head nod with fatigue. She glanced over at Jaime and saw how weariness had carved the faint lines around his eyes deeper.

"I think we should stop at a hotel and continue on in the morning," she said.

He glanced at her. "You sure? You're the one with a deadline; I can get there any time."

She nodded sleepily. "No point in risking our lives. It'll only be…" She glanced down at the GPS. "…nine more hours from here to Manchester."

But there were no open rooms at the first hotel they stopped at, nor the second, nor even the third. At the fourth, a rather disreputable-looking motel, Brienne was starting to despair.

"You stay," she told Jaime, hopping out as soon as he stopped the car. "I'll go ask."

The place was a dump, with a stained carpet and dingy upholstery on the outdated lobby chairs. By that point, however, Brienne was starting to feel like she could curl up in her pashmina on that gross old carpet and sleep for a week.

"Have you got any rooms available?"

"Got one room," said the woman behind the counter. Her eyes were locked on the TV, where the lives of some real housewives were being documented for posterity.

 _Oh, god,_ Brienne thought, with a sinking feeling. It was impossible, wasn't it? But they were so tired, and it was dangerous to drive when sleepy, and…

"But it has two beds?" she pressed hopefully.

"Just one," said the woman, completely uninterested.

 **Brienne**

Brienne sighed. "Is it at least a _big_ bed?"

The woman peered blearily up at her, then out the window at where Jaime was clearly visible in the car, his face highlighted by the harsh yellow glare of the motel's sign.

"Yeah," the woman said with a dirty grin, and pulled a registration form from a document rack on the wall.

"I'll just go… make sure he's okay with that," Brienne said in a rush, and went outside.

He rolled down the window as she approached. "Any luck?"

"Sort of. They've only got one room. With one bed." Brienne averted her gaze, staring up at the almost-full moon, hazy with ice crystals. There was no way she was going to watch the expression on his face as he came to understand the implications of what she was saying; she'd had a lifetime of seeing men flinch at the idea of even touching her, let alone kissing or, god forbid, having sex with her. She wasn't going to put herself through the experience of watching it in the first man she'd actually felt strongly drawn to in her entire life.

"Will that be a problem for you?" Jaime asked her, and oh, it was unfair for a man's voice to sound like velvet. How did he do that?

She dragged her gaze from the damned moon to look at him once more. His eyes were deep, shadowed, but there was a flicker of something she didn't dare put any faith in. A flash of desire speared her belly, and she couldn't keep from looking down at his lips, for just a split second. She wanted him, badly. This was a mistake.

"No," she managed to say. "If you're fine with it, so am I."

He nodded, and shifted to get his wallet out of his back pocket.

"No, I've got it," she told him, holding up his hand. "Like you said, I'm the one in a rush. You could have just taken your time in Raleigh, had a nice slow trip north, if not for me."

"Alright."

Their eyes met again, and Brienne hurried back to the apathetic woman behind the counter. She handed over a credit card, signed away her right to sue if various things occurred, and was granted a key with the number eleven stamped on it. Taking a deep breath, she returned to the car.

"Number eleven," she told Jaime, and he steered them to it.

Once inside, Brienne took a deep breath and immediately wished she hadn't.

"I'm getting hints of… hm," said Jaime as he entered behind her, her bag in hand. "Stale tobacco… Marlboro, if I'm not mistaken… aged about… ten years, would you say?"

She laughed. "Oh, at least fifteen," she joked. "And an undertone of beer, as well. Domestic, I think. Schlitz?"

"Definitely," he said, grinning. "And notes of… Burger King?"

"Greasier," she corrected with an expert nod. "Definitely McDonald's."

He laughed as he went back outside to get his own bag. Brienne stood in the shabby room and hugged herself, feeling… happy, and intensely suspicious of it. He was handsome, sexy, _and_ fun. She didn't know if her heart could take it. Anxiety seized her, and as she always did when anxious, she turned to music to soothe her.

She set to freeing her violin case from where she'd packed her clothing around it in her suitcase, then removing the violin and bow. She eased it into position under her chin and, with a sigh of relief, very quietly played the opening notes to a pretty folk song she'd learned recently.

The jangling nerves she'd felt since arriving at the airport melted away, just with those few bars, and when she drew to the end of the measure, she let the final note trail sweetly away.

"That was amazing," Jaime said quietly from behind her, and she turned to find him standing in the open doorway, his bag in his lone hand. He was staring at her as if she'd performed some kind of incredible magic trick, and she felt her ears heat with embarrassment.

"You're letting the cold in," she told him.

He shut the door, but his eyes stayed fixed on her. "Play more of that," he said. "It's beautiful."

Wary, Brienne began again, this time playing through the entire piece. Her touch was light, not wanting to make a lot of noise and wake up any neighbors they might have, so the notes sounded delicate, barely-there, just a whisper in the air. As always, the thrumming of the strings pierced right through her, drawing her into the music, permeating her being with the beauty she was creating, and she swayed along with it, her eyes closed, letting it rock her to her core.

When it was done, she stood there a moment longer, enjoying the feel of the room, as if it burgeoned with music, had been cleansed by it. A light touch on her arm made her eyes fly open.

Jaime stood there, right next to her, very close— _too_ close— and the expression on his face was—

God, if she didn't know better, she'd think it was—

Brienne lowered the violin, placing it in its case.

"Jaime," she began. His hand was on her arm, and he turned her to face him. "Jaime…"

This close, she could see she was about an inch taller than him. He didn't seem to care. He brought his hand up to thread through her hair, cupping her head, and drew her down that one inch so he could kiss her.

Sensation ricocheted through her, sending chills down her limbs. His lips were soft, and warm, and he used them to part hers so he could caress her tongue with his own. He moaned, and arousal pinged through her. She was terrified, but god, she wanted this, wanted _him_. He was crazy— he _had_ to be— but she couldn't seem to deny herself this pleasure.

Brienne framed his face with her hands and kissed him back. She had no real idea what she was doing, her experience in kissing being limited in the extreme, but she loved what he was doing and knew just what she wanted to do back. His arm came around her back and pulled her tight against him. When her breasts pressed against his chest, she whimpered into his mouth.

He answered her with a groan of his own, and pulled her even closer against him. Their being a near-match in height meant they were perfectly aligned. She could feel an insistent pressure right where she wanted it the most, and a stab of desire almost sent her to her knees. Her fingers delved into all that golden hair, and she felt ravenous as she kissed and kissed him.

He urged her backwards, and her balance went wonky for a moment until she felt the surety of the wall at her back. Jaime pressed himself more firmly against her, letting her feel all those lovely muscles, and she rewarded him by sinking her teeth into his bottom lip.

His hips jerked in reaction, this time grinding between her legs, and she let out a sound that was more at home in a wild nature program than her own mouth, something needy and primal.

"Oh, shit," gasped Jaime. "Either we get on the bed and you let me fuck you, or we have to stop."


	4. and facts and figures

**Jaime**

Jaime wasn't quite sure what had happened to him. He liked music well enough; he listened to it while jogging and lifting weights and went to Tyrion's concerts when his brother demanded it of him, enjoying himself for the most part. He'd never thought of himself as especially into any particular kind, and especially not classical.

But when he'd heard the first haunting notes float from the room, every hair on his body had stood on end. He'd hastened inside to see what she was doing, knowing she was playing, but… needing to see it, to see her, as she did it.

She stopped, turning to face him, and he had no thought in his head but more.

"That was amazing," he said.

She stared at him, looking… scared, somehow, like a doe poised for flight at the first sign of movement.

"You're letting the cold in," she whispered.

He hadn't even noticed the door was still open. Hadn't noticed it was cold, or even winter. He'd been blind and deaf to anything but her. He shut the door, unable to drag his eyes off her.

"Play more of that," he said, hearing the plea in his own voice. "It's beautiful."

Slowly, she replaced the violin under her chin and continued. Right away, she sank into it, giving herself over to it completely. She was breathtaking, the way her body moved with the notes, how she swayed and flowed with the tune.

Her brow puckered in concentration, her lips parted as if exhaling the notes rather than drawing them forth with her bow across the strings. It was the most sensual, sexual thing he'd ever seen, and his body had responded as it had not done since he was in high school: with an immediate, rock-hard erection and the insistent need to touch her.

Without even realizing it, he'd moved nearer, until she was close enough to lay his hand on. When she was done, he did touch her, just her arm, but it could have been her breasts or between her legs for how it made lightning slash through him.

"Jaime…"

Haltingly, with motions nowhere near as graceful as they'd been while she was playing, she put the violin back in its case. As soon as she did, he tugged her around.

"Jaime…"

God, the sound of his name in that husky voice of hers. Damning himself for only having one hand he could use, he brought up the left and skimmed her hair as he'd wanted since first laying eyes on her. It was soft, so soft, and he would spend hours playing with it some day, but right now, he had to kiss her.

Her lips were full, plush even. Jaime felt like his were sinking into them, like they were merging. Her tongue was wet velvet, and she was kissing him back, just as hungrily. He moaned into her mouth at her reciprocation.

It's not just me, he thought with relief. She wants me, too. He didn't know what he would have done if she didn't.

Her hands were on his face and lust began to make him break into a sweat. He wrapped his arms around her, delighting in the sounds she was making and the way she was tugging on his hair. Needing more, more pressure and more heat and more, he backed her against the wall and ground his erection against her. Their similar heights meant that they were perfectly aligned, and he rubbed right between her legs, wringing from her the sexiest, most estrogen-soaked cry he'd ever heard a woman make.

"Oh, shit," Jaime panted. "Either we get on the bed and you let me fuck you, or we have to stop."

She opened dazed eyes, and once again he was struck dumb at their beauty. Her hands were still in his hair. She seemed balanced on a knife's edge of indecision. He waited, agonized, wanting her, not wanting to push her.

"We should—" she began breathlessly, gulping air into her lungs. "We just met. This is— too soon." She licked her lips. "Oh, I can still taste you."

Jaime groaned, and kissed her again. She opened to him right away, this time moving her hands over his shoulders and back. He realized, with immense relief, that she liked his body, and desire rolled over him in a wave.

"Brienne," he said, dragging his mouth away. "Please. Tell me what you want."

He heard the begging tone in his words, should have hated it, but it didn't seem important. Nothing did, except getting his mouth back on hers.

"I want you," she whispered, "but it's too soon."

He dropped his head to her shoulder, fighting to steady his ragged breathing. He knew she was right— it was too soon, they'd only known each other for five hours, maybe less— but his body was clamoring for release. With her, only with her. He wanted to see her face when she came, the same face she'd made while playing her violin, passionate, transported by joy.

"Okay," he said when he could breath properly again. "Okay."

Peeling himself off her, he stepped back and raked his fingers through the hair she had mussed so thoroughly. In her passion. Because she wanted him. His erection felt like it would punch through his jeans.

"I'm going to—" he looked around, found where he'd dropped his bag. "I'm going to… go kill myself. Or something." He stepped into the tiny bathroom and shut the door. Setting the bag on the sink, he sat on the closed toilet and buried his face in his hand.

What the hell was he doing? He was no saint, but he'd never had a one-night stand before. Nor had he had sex with a woman only a few hours after meeting her. Something about her had short-circuited his brain.

Standing, Jaime stripped and stepped into the shower, twisting the knob and hissing when he was hit with a blast of frigid water. It was just what he needed; his erection subsided without much fuss and was gone by the time the water was coursing warm over him. He gave himself a quick wash, then stepped out and dried off. He rummaged through his bag for his pajama bottoms, brushed his teeth, and steeled his nerves to go back out there.

Brienne was standing at the foot of the bed. She'd changed into a close-fitting t-shirt and yoga pants, both of which did nothing to hide the strong lines of her body, the uptilted mounds of her breasts— and their prominent nipples— and even the cleft between her legs. Jaime was very grateful for the lingering affects of the icy water because his dick only gave a hopeful twitch before subsiding once more…

…until she began looking at him. Her eyes roamed over his bare chest, over his shoulders and arms and his abdomen, and the want in them for him almost had him barreling across the room to push her up against the wall once more.

"It's all yours," he said hoarsely, unsure whether he meant the bathroom or his body— both, probably— and sidled along the bed to leave a clear path for her.

She nodded jerkily and took her toiletry kit with her into the bathroom. Once the door was shut, Jaime wasted no time getting under the covers, wondering with desperation how he was going to keep his hands— hand— off her all night. Perhaps he should sleep on top of the covers. Perhaps he should sleep in the car. Perhaps he should run off, screaming, into the night. So many choices.

His lost his window of opportunity, then, because she came out of the bathroom, looking freshly scrubbed, and somehow even that was alluring. He rubbed his hand over his face before reaching up to turn off his light.

"I thought I'd sleep on top of the covers," she said softly, and turned out her own.

"Okay," he said, just as quietly.

But the room was still cold from when he'd stupidly watched her from the open doorway, and even though she pulled her blanket-scarf thing over her, he could feel her shivering.

"Brienne," he said, "get under the covers. I won't touch you."

"That's what I'm afraid of," she replied with a touch of humor, but stood and pulled back the blankets before crawling under. She hummed happily to feel the heat he'd given the bed already, and gave a kittenish scrunch into the mattress and linens that was oddly endearing, considering her size.

They lay there, flat on their backs, tired but sleepless. After a while, Jaime moved his hand a few inches to the left, then a few more, and then it was on top of hers. She flipped hers over so they were palm-to-palm. Their fingers twined. Her breathing deepened, and he knew she was asleep. Feeling peculiar— warm and happy, somehow, even though he'd been blue-balled— Jaime slipped out of consciousness as well.

When he woke again, the room was still pitch-black. He was cocooned in warmth and softness. A body— a large body— was pressed up against him, his arm around it, and a head was on his chest, curly hair tickling his chin. An arm was around his waist, and a leg was thrown over his.

For a moment, he was disoriented, and felt a flash of panic. Then he remembered the previous day. Escaping Miami. Getting stuck in Raleigh. Meeting Brienne. Sharing the car. The violin music. The near-miss of sex against the wall.

That last part was his favorite.

Jaime often woke in the night. When he was with a woman, that was his cue to take his leave. When he was alone, thoughts about work would make him alert and he'd not fall back to sleep. But he didn't feel any impulse to flee, and work was the farthest thing from his mind. He tried to recall the notes Brienne had played earlier, and was pleased when they flowed back to him. Drifting, drifting, he fell back asleep.

The next time he woke, it was because Brienne was carefully unwinding herself from him. Daylight was trying its best to get past the curtains. Cool air flowed under the covers as she extricated herself from the bed. Jaime grumbled, rolling onto his stomach and burying his face in her pillow.

She gave a low laugh, and the sound made his skin prickle. He turned his head the other way to watch her go into the bathroom. From the back, those yoga pants were just as entrancing as they'd been from the front. Her ass was the stuff of legends, all taut roundness and flexing muscle. But she taught self-defense, in addition to making the most amazing music he'd ever heard, so it just stood to reason.

He heard the shower go on, and figured his time was limited, so he got out of the bed and rummaged through his bag for clean clothes. Once in fresh boxer briefs, socks, and jeans, he brushed his hair and waited until she was out of the bathroom so he could shave. As she stepped out, damp curls springing around her face, her eyes went to his bare chest with gratifying directness, and lingered.

"So I can shave without dripping onto my shirt," he told her, wanting her to know he wasn't trying to seduce her. Though if he managed it anyway, he wouldn't exactly mind.

Brienne dragged her gaze from its roaming over his shoulders to his face. It sharpened as she examined his cheeks and jaw.

"You, uh, don't have to shave if you don't want," she murmured, turning away so she could pack her things away. "It's the holidays, right?"

Jaime stood there for a moment before gathering himself and going to the bathroom for his own needs. For a moment, she'd ogled him, and he'd loved it. Oh, he'd been leered at before, but somehow he thought she might be leering at him, rather than just his looks or, as had happened quite a few times before, his wealth.

The idea made him feel cheerful, and he found himself whistling as he went through his morning routine. He skipped the shaving as per her suggestion, and when he returned to the room, it was to find she'd repacked her things, donned her boots, and was holding her blanket thing with intent to swaddle herself in it.

Brienne wore another pair of the leggings, these charcoal gray, with another long sweater over it. The sweater had a wide cowl neck, and had slouched off her shoulder, exposing the creamy slope of her neck and the fragile strap of a camisole. As if that weren't dangerous enough to his self-control, its color was navy blue, and made her eyes look darker, almost mysterious.

And she was mysterious to Jaime; he hardly knew anything about her.

Well, I have nine or more hours to remedy that, he thought, the prospect of such a long drive making him feel a bit excited about it instead of reluctant as he normally might be.

"You won't get a chill, going out into the cold with damp hair?" he asked her as he tugged on his jacket.

"Oh, no," she said, and hoisted her suitcase off the ground. "It's so fine, it dries fast. It's probably dry already, in fact." She raked her hand through it, making the curls tumble around her face. "See?"

Then she tilted her head toward him, the invitation for him to feel it implicit. Jaime lifted his hand and skimmed his fingertips over it, then pushed his fingers into the mass of waves. It felt like a skein of silk tangling around them, soft and just the slightest bit cool from the lingering dampness.

"Ah," he murmured, and she straightened, but he didn't let go, only kept his hand with her head so he was cupping it again, as he had last night when he'd kissed her. She stared at him, into him, through him.

"Will you give me a good-morning kiss?" he asked.


	5. and instructions for dancing

**Brienne**

"I don't think that's wise," Brienne said breathlessly.

She'd been short of breath from the moment she'd awakened, in fact. She had fallen asleep just holding Jaime's hand, and woken up with his long, muscled body wrapped around her from behind, the handless arm curved protectively over her waist and his face smooshed against her shoulder.

It had been wonderful.

If he'd been sexy by night, in the morning, sleep-rumpled and relaxed, he was almost irresistible. She had hastened to untangle herself from him, but couldn't help a little laugh when he grumbled and tried to hide from the sunlight in her pillow.

 _Not a morning person,_ she thought, smiling as she ducked into the bathroom.

Brienne's shower turned into something more sensual than practical, because she couldn't wash herself without imagining his hands—hand— doing it instead. Or perhaps his lips. He had amazing lips, she decided. An amazing smile. An amazing everything. Even lacking one hand didn't detract, just made him more complex and fascinating.

She decided to bring herself off so she didn't spend the day in a state of unfulfilled arousal, and bit her lip hard to keep from moaning his name when she came. Feeling clearer, more focused, she finished up with a brisk shot of cold water, then finished up so they could get going. But when she stepped out of the bathroom, it was to find Jaime standing there, dressed but for his shirt, and in the bright light of day, he was somehow even more handsome than at night.

He was made for the sun, his skin toasted by it to gleaming bronze, his hair streaked in places by it to platinum. She could imagine him surfing, rowing, riding— horse or bicycle, equally at home on both— playing any variety of ball-related sports. His shoulders, naked, were the stuff of fantasies come to life. She wanted to bite into the smooth cap of muscle, trail her tongue over his collarbone and up his throat…

"So I can shave without dripping onto my shirt," he said, explaining his lack of shirt.

She liked the clean angle of his jaw revealed by shaven cheeks, but the way the sunlight glanced over his stubble was giving her heart palpitations.

"You, uh, don't have to shave if you don't want," she mumbled, and went to fuss with her suitcase so she had an excuse not to be skewered by his direct green gaze. "It's the holidays, right?"

He didn't reply, just went into the bathroom. Faintly, through the door, she heard him begin to whistle. She tried to distract herself by dressing and was ready to go when he came back out, stubble still in place and now wearing another Henley, this one in a chocolatey brown that made golden sparks flare in the depths of his eyes.

He began to shrug into his jacket. "You won't get a chill, going out into the cold with damp hair?"

"Oh, no," she said, and hoisted her suitcase off the ground. He was almost blinding her with his masculine beauty. It made her nervous, and when she was nervous, she babbled. Did stupid things. This was one of those times. "It's so fine, it dries fast. It's probably dry already, in fact." She jammed her hand through the mass of curls and even bent over a little so he could tell for himself. "See?"

He touched her hair carefully, almost… reverently.

"Ah," he said softly.

Just when she thought he was done, he threaded his fingers into the thick mass, and Brienne found herself in the same predicament as the previous night, with Jaime holding her head and coming closer, his intention to kiss her clear. She stared at him, half-aroused, half-terrified.

"Will you give me a good-morning kiss?" he asked. A ray of sunlight hit his eyes, turning them to molten gold, and she had another moment where she entered a fugue state, her body refusing to take commands any longer from her panicked mind, because she brought up her free hand to cup his face, and even met him halfway.

It was, she learned then, not a fluke. Last night's kiss, that was, and the chemistry that sizzled had between them. Heat rolled in waves down her body from the points of contact between them. She had to fight the impulse to deepen the kiss with everything she had, restricting herself only to a feather-light play of their lips together, because if she let herself go, they'd be up against the wall again, and this time she didn't think she'd have the strength to resist his offer to fuck her.

She really, really wanted him to fuck her.

Worse, _she_ wanted to fuck _him_. The scene she'd imagined in the shower played before her mind's eye once more: him sitting up against the headboard, her straddling his lap, riding him as he fondled her breasts and they kissed… ah, that was what had pushed her into an intense climax. She could almost feel him inside her already. She'd never had sex with an actual man— just an elaborate array of sex toys, carefully selected as per her mood on a particular day— but the idea of him sunk into her to the root made her head spin.

She was just reconsidering her negative stance on the morning-sex-against-the-headboard when Jaime ended the kiss and drew back.

"Good morning," he told her, and smiled.

"Morning," she replied, unable to keep from smiling back.

He stepped away, retrieving his bag. "Hungry?"

"Starving," she said. "I saw a sign for a Waffle House just before we got off the highway."

He quirked an eyebrow as they deserted the room for the car. "Is one _required_ to get waffles there?"

She stared at him over the roof of the car. "You've never been to a Waffle House?"

He gave a shrug, looking slightly uncomfortable. "It's not the type of place my father would let us go to."

Brienne tilted her head, studying him. "I might be wrong," she drawled, just enough to be tease him, "but you look like you might be over twenty-one. Why is your father still calling your shots?"

Jaime's mood soured in an instant, and he shot her a look she could not decypher. "Let's return the key."

She quailed a little; hadn't meant to make him angry. At the office, she hopped out and handed the key over to the same bored clerk and hastened to return to the car.

Once back on the highway, Brienne busied herself looking for the Waffle House sign again. She felt awful for bringing up something that clearly was upsetting to him, and chastised herself for ruining what could have been a pleasant trip.

"My father is— was—" Jaime began, surprising her.

She turned to face him, and confronted once more with his extraordinary profile. She was glad he was speaking, if only to give her a valid reason to stare at him.

He seemed to grope mentally for the right word. Then he shrugged, giving up. "My father was a tyrant. A cold, greedy tyrant. We had no freedom to do what we wanted until he was too sick to keep control over us."

"Even as adults?" Brienne had trouble understanding what he was saying. How could a person maintain such a grip even after majority?

His laugh was humorless. "Especially as adults." He glanced over at her and groaned. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you'd pull out your heart and give it to me, if I asked." A muscle ticked in his jaw. "You can't do anything to change it."

 _Was that how she was looking at him?_ Brienne was shocked by that. She'd felt a rush of sympathetic pain for him, and wished with all her might that his life had been different, and that he'd been as fortunate as she to have a parent like her own father, who was the most wonderful man she knew.

"It's enough that you're… expanding my horizons," he continued, the good humor back in his voice.

"I… am?" She'd love to know how.

"If not for you, I'd never have experienced the wonders of a roadside Motel 6," he said with a grin. "And now—" he steered the car into the Waffle House parking lot— "you're about to be my tour guide for another whirlwind trip through the life of the hoi polloi."

She feigned a gasp. "Hoi polloi! Wow, you're a snob."

"Guilty as charged. Do I get credit for trying to de-snob-ify myself, though, even at this late date, seeing as how I'm a year or two past being twenty-one?" He turned off the engine and got out.

"A year or _ten_ , I think you mean," she shot back as she unfolded herself from the car.

Jaime staggered back, wrist over his chest, as if she'd shot him. "You pull no punches," he gasped dramatically, opening the door for her while she giggled. "Cruel woman."

"And don't you forget it," she said, and swept past him to enter the restaurant.

His husky laugh vibrated in her brain as she looked around for an empty table. There was one in the far corner, so she headed for it. Once there, she handed him one of the menus already on the table, and took once for herself.

"What do you recommend?" Jaime asked as he stared down at the laminated card. "I've never even heard of most of these dishes."

Brienne stared at him over her menu, trying to judge whether or not he was joking. "For real?"

He looked at her over his own menu. "For real, for real," he murmured, squinting at the meals on offer. "Chicken-fried steak? How do you chicken-fry something when there's no chicken in it?"

He looked genuinely puzzled. She just shook her head, smirking. "Don't worry about that, you don't need to eat it."

Jaime frowned. "But what if I _want_ to eat it? What if I want to plumb the mystery of how to make chicken out of something entirely _lacking_ in chicken?"

"Trust me. Chicken-fried steak is a short, one-way trip toward coronary disease, and body fat in the high double digits." She ran a discerning eye over him, appreciating the way he filled out his Henley, and decided to take a chance at flirting, despite an admittedly terrible track record up to that point. "And you look like someone who takes care of himself, so…"

She let her words trail off suggestively. Her risk was richly rewarded when he froze and looked up from the menu again, this time with heat in his eyes instead of humor. He returned the favor of leering at her, trailing his gaze so slowly and thoroughly over her that she could almost feel it as an actual physical caress.

"Wench," he murmured. "That's what you are, a wench. Heartlessly teasing a man when he can't do anything to make you put your money where your mouth is."

"You didn't seem to mind where my mouth was this morning. Or last night." Her heart felt like it had leapt up into her throat, pounding so hard she could hardly swallow past it. She forced herself to look down at the menu. "And don't call me 'wench'."

"I didn't mind at all, no," Jaime said. He laid his menu down on the sticky table, devoting all his considerable attention to her. "Though I have thought of a few other places I also wouldn't mind it going."

Brienne brought the menu up to hide the entirety of her face, which judging by the heat radiating off it had to have turned the color of a beet. Her breath was coming in choppy gasps.

"Who's heartlessly teasing who, now?" she managed to ask. She was more turned on at that moment, sitting in a damned Waffle House, than she'd ever been in her life. He wasn't even touching her.

The waitress, of course, chose that moment to arrive. "What'll you have?" she asked, pulling a pen from behind her ear.

Jaime, of course, chose that moment to slide a foot between hers and tangle their ankles together.

"I'll have the pecan waffle," Brienne blurted. "With chocolate chips. And a biscuit with gravy. And orange juice. And bacon."

There was no way she could eat all that, but she couldn't seem to make her mouth stop talking. Not when Jaime was playing footsie with her under the table.

"And for you?" the waitress asked him. She seemed to just realize how handsome he was, because her posture straightened and her smile gained in sincerity. She flicked a look back at Brienne that seemed to exclaim _can you believe how hot this guy is?_ and Brienne just grinned back to say _I know, isn_ _'_ _t he incredible?_

"I'll have coffee," he began, with a last, dubious glance at his menu. "And a large hashbrowns with grilled mushrooms and smoked ham."

The waitress whisked away the menus and deserted them. Without the barrier of the menu, Brienne had nothing to hide behind and found herself looking off to the side, her high school years of crippling awkwardness flashing before her eyes like an Apocalypse Now-level case of PTSD.

Until Jaime began sliding his foot back and forth between hers again. She shot a panicked glance at him, and found him eyeing her slyly.

"Pay attention to me, Brienne," he pretended to whine, and she had to laugh. "I'm excited about this crap we're about to eat. I need to share with someone."

"Hardly 'crap'," she scoffed, desperately grateful to him for helping her out of her pit of self-consciousness. "You managed to order something that almost sounds gourmet. Grilled mushrooms? Smoked ham?"

"I can only lower my standards so much," he replied in a lofty tone, then flashed a smile at the waitress as she arrived with their beverages.

She smiled back, looking as dazed by him as Brienne felt, before wobbling away.

"Bad enough you're making me lose my mind," she pretended to grumble, "but that poor woman has to work all day. Give her a break. Be kind."

"As kind as you're being to me?" he shot back. "With those tights? And that sweater?" He made a disgusted sound in his nose and took a sip of his coffee, grimacing at the taste.

Brienne leaned back, surprised. "What's— what about my tights and sweater?"

She thought she'd hit upon a winning strategy with this sort of outfit. It made the most of her legs and skimmed over the fact that she had no discernible waistline and breasts like fried eggs. Better, the tights packed very small, and the sweaters did as well, so she didn't have to use a bigger suitcase to carry enough for a week of outfits.

Jaime stared at her as if she were crazy. "The way they show your legs? And how that neckline keeps slipping off your shoulders…" His gaze moved to her neck, tracing the length of it.

"My legs… they aren't _that_ bad," she insisted. There wasn't a lot she was confident about, with her body, but she had actual photographic proof that her legs were well-toned and free of cellulite.

He barked out a strained laugh. "You have the thighs of a goddess," he told her very seriously. "Of a Valkyrie. You're like Xena, Warrior Princess, but blonde." He paused. "Please tell me you have a Xena costume."

Brienne gaped at him, convinced he'd lost his mind. Maybe it was something in the Waffle House coffee. "I do not have a Xena costume," she told him witheringly. "Do you have a Hercules costume?"

"What would you do if I did?" he asked, seeming way more interested in her answer than she was comfortable with. "If you give me a minute, I will."

She snatched his phone out of his hand before he could pull up Amazon and order anything bizarre.

" 'Thighs of a goddess', " she muttered, taking a hasty gulp of orange juice, her ears flaming hot. "And what's wrong with the sweater?" she demanded, skipping right over his lavish compliments about her legs.

"Wrong? Nothing. Dangerous? Everything."


	6. but I love when you read it to me

**Jaime**

Brienne seemed thoroughly confused. Did she really not know how sensual she looked? Could she truly be so unaware of how suggestive it was to have that sweater slipping off her, making a man— him— think about how it would fall to the floor and leave her in only that silky little camisole.

He prayed with all his heart that she went braless under it. From the all-too-brief look he'd gotten at her in her t-shirt last night before bed, her breasts looked like they'd fit perfectly, in both size and shape, into a champagne coupe. The idea entranced him to the point where he made himself a solemn vow: that before his life had ended, he, Jaime Lannister, would see if Brienne's breasts had anything in common with a champagne coupe.

Then it occurred to him that he didn't know her last name, and since they'd been on the verge of having some really good sex last night, he should at least know that much about her.

"What's your last name?" he asked, bringing his coffee cup to his lips for another sip of the excruciatingly bad brew. He considered adding still more sugar and creamer to it, but it already tasted like melted coffee-flavored ice cream and he didn't think he'd be able to swallow it down if it got any sweeter or milkier.

Brienne looked surprised, and then blushed— _again_ , god, she was adorable— clearly realizing as he had that they'd gotten pretty up-close-and-personal for people who barely knew each other.

"Tarth," she replied.

"Tell me more about yourself, Brienne Tarth."

She stared down into her half-empty glass of juice as if it held all the answer to all the mysteries of the universe. "Like what?" she mumbled, clearly uncomfortable.

Jaime shrugged. "Anything. Everything. I doubt there's anything about you that would bore me."

She laughed. "You would be so, so wrong about that."

"Try me."

She looked at the napkin dispenser, craned her neck to peer at the swinging door to the kitchen, stared out the window at the passing traffic.

"I like music," she said, a tinge of desperation in her words, and he laughed.

"Yes, I picked up on that." He decided to have some mercy on her. "Which instruments do you play?"

"All of them," was her prompt reply, "but I prefer strings. Obviously."

"Why strings?"

"Woodwinds are too fussy, percussion is boring, keyboards are too big to carry around easily, and there's too much saliva involved in brass."

That startled him into a laugh, which coaxed a smile from her. Then their breakfast arrived. Jaime watched with amusement as more and more plates were thumped onto the table before her. She bit her lip as she looked down at the wide array of food.

"Guess I'll be bringing home a big doggie bag," she murmured, picking up her fork.

"Do you have a big doggie?"

She shook her head, smiling, and used the edge of her fork to cut into her waffle which, Jaime had to admit, looked pretty damned good. "We travel too much for performances. It wouldn't be fair to a pet. Though I would like to have a cat." She flashed him a grin. "I figured, now that I'm thirty and single, my next step was to become a crazy cat lady."

He was pulled in two opposite directions then, with his surprise at her lack of husband or boyfriend on the one hand and a bone-deep relief that she was available on the other.

"So, you're single…" he said, with a dismaying lack of coolness. He wasn't usually this obvious, but then, he wasn't usually this interested in a woman.

She blinked at him over the bite of waffle she'd just tucked into her mouth. Slowly, she withdrew the tines of the fork from between her lips, and Jaime had the weird realization that even that turned him on. He tried to justify it to himself with the explanation of 'something sliding out from between her lips' but the sad truth was that she could probably have squatted on the table and crowed like a rooster and he'd still have found something sexy about it.

"Yes," Brienne said after chewing and swallowing. "I hope you are, too, or I'm going to feel pretty upset with myself and really angry with you, after last night."

"And this morning."

She nodded slowly. "And this morning."

Her unwavering gaze gave him that skewered feeling again.

"No," he answered. "I'm not married, engaged, dating, seeing, or even friends-with-benefits-ing anyone right now." He cast back his memory for the last time he'd been with a woman, and realized it was when Tyrion and Shae had gotten married. One of her bridesmaids had come on so strongly, and he'd been so tipsy due to feeling lonely, and envious of his brother, and then ashamed of that envy, that she'd found him an easy mark. One quick trip to the coat closet later, and his last sexual escapade had come to a close.

"Not for over four months," he added, wanting her to know that he wasn't free with his attentions as she might have assumed, judging by how quickly he'd offered himself up to her.

She looked surprised as she pushed away the uneaten half of her waffle and started in on the biscuit slathered with a gray, lumpy, and unappetizing-looking gravy.

"Aren't you going to eat?" she questioned, waving her fork at the steaming bowl in front of him.

"I was just girding my loins in preparation," he said, steeling himself. It didn't look too bad, though he'd certainly seen better. The mushrooms were a bit limp, and the ham improbably pink, but it probably wouldn't kill him. He forked up a mouthful.

She watched him with those expressive eyes, a faint smile curling her lips. "Well?"

The mushrooms were flavorless. The ham was like small spongy cubes of salt. The potato wasn't bad, however, and he resolved to next time just order them plain. The other options— chili, salsa, that gray gravy— were not things he would consider putting in his mouth. He loved chili and salsa and could not bear to experience what this place could do to two of his favorite foods.

"It's great," he lied with an unconvincing smile.

She just laughed and pulled the bowl away from him. "You hate it. Try my waffle."

He liked her waffle. He liked her bacon. He even liked her biscuit with sausage gravy, though that, too, was intensely salty and he found himself requesting another cup of the grotesque coffee to keep himself from withering up like a slug.

When they were done, he tried to pay, but she outmaneuvered him when he went to use the restroom. She met his glower with a bright smile, and he just shook her head at him.

"Let me drive for a while," she said, so he handed over the keys. She steered them expertly over the combination bridge-tunnel spanning the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and Jaime enjoyed the opportunity to look at the water instead of having to pay attention to the drive as usual. Once on the DelMarVa peninsula, they traveled in companionable silence for an hour.

The bleakness of the Delaware landscape, however, gave Jaime nothing to distract him so he decided to grill her for information again.

"How long has it been since _you've_ been married, engaged, dated, or friends-with-benefits-ed anyone?" he asked.

She slanted him an amused glance. "Let me think," she drawled. "Seventeen plus thirteen… carry the one… yes, that would be… thirty years."

He frowned, confused. "But you said before you've just turned thirty."

"Yes, yes, I did."

He sat there in a shocked little silence. "Are you telling me you've never dated anyone _ever_?"

"Yep," she replied cheerfully. A little _too_ cheerfully, he thought; her voice sounded the faintest bit strained, and her grin looked forced.

"Have you taken some sort of bizarre vow of chastity?"

She laughed, and this time, her amusement was genuine. "No, but I might as well have." She shot him a wry grin. "Thirty years old and never been kissed. Until last night."

"That doesn't make any sense," he muttered, more to himself than to her. He scowled out the window at the sunlight glinting off the Atlantic Ocean. "You kiss like Casanova himself gave you lessons, and you're gorgeous."

Then he had another, stranger idea, and looked over to her again.

"Wait, wait, wait," Jaime said. "Are you seriously telling me that before last night, with me, no one had ever kissed you?"

"I am seriously telling you that."

"But…" He frowned. "How could you have sex without kissing? Isn't that one of the best parts?"

She shrugged. "Thirty years old and haven't been screwed, either."

He stared at her, really stared at her, for a long moment before collapsing back against the SUV's opulent leather upholstery. He felt like a robot that had short-circuited, his brain on an endless loop of 'does not compute'. Not only was it odd, in this day and age, to achieve the age of thirty without having had sex, but for a woman of Brienne's myriad attractions, it just made no sense to him.

What bone-headed fool had met her and not been bowled over right away, as Jaime himself had been? Who could hear her voice, could see her pretty blonde curls, could look into those amazing eyes, and not want her? Who in their right mind could hear her play the violin, or cello, or anything else she could do, and not have to fight the urge to tear off her clothes and have her up against a wall?

"That," he said firmly, "is the saddest damned thing I've ever heard."

She flinched. "Go to hell, Jaime," she murmured, eyes on the road and bright patches of color in her cheeks.

"I mean," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken, "you have to have met a lot of men. And they've all been _that_ stupid? The experience of a lifetime, and they just sailed right by it." He shook his head, amazed. "Well, at least now I don't have any crazy-high standard I have to live up to." He flashed her a grin. "I can be downright lazy, and you won't know the difference."

Brienne turned her head slowly, staring at him so long that he started to worry they were going to die in a fiery car crash. Finally, blessedly, she looked back at the road. Her hands clenched the steering wheel, and she chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. When she finally spoke, though, it was only to ask if he wanted to go through Philadelphia or take the ferry to New Jersey.

"Ferry," he said decisively. "We can pretend we're on a cruise."

"Aren't cruises usually to hot, fun places? It's December, and we're headed to New Jersey," Brienne protested, trying (and failing) to keep from smiling. "New _Jersey_ , Jaime. Where fun goes to _die_."

"We'll just have to create our own fun." He slanted her a glance. "And our own heat."

She didn't reply, but her cheeks reddened. He was having a hell of a good time making her blush. He'd thought women couldn't blush anymore, that it was a forgotten practice lost in the sands of time when women wore corsets and men tossed their jackets across puddles so their lady loves didn't dampen their shoes. He found it impossibly charming, and considered making it a life goal to get her blushing as often as possible.

How many times might he be able to see her, while he was in New Hampshire? It was the twenty-third of December, and he didn't have to be back to work in New York City until the second of January. He fully intended to impose himself upon Tyrion's hospitality, if it meant he was close enough to spend as much time as possible with her.

He supposed he could spare an hour or two for his brother and sister-in-law, too. Maybe Brienne would join them? Then he wouldn't have to choose between familial duty and the pleasure of her company.

Jaime wondered what he'd have to do to get her to play the violin for him again. _Just_ him, not for a crowd of strangers, anonymous and impersonal. He hadn't seen a woman display such fervor, such zeal, for something in years. The women in his echelon of society were trained from birth to present themselves as ennui-suffering misanthropes who'd seen it all and been impressed by none of it. Their educations, their careers, even their damned hobbies were all designed with exquisite care for appearance and impressions, for the wealth they could bring in and the connections they could provide.

And then there was Brienne, playing her heart out, for no reason other than the beauty and joy she found in it.

He had a sudden realization that he was completely, hideously out of his league with her. Had no idea how to behave around someone so genuine. This was what Tyrion had meant, when he'd said Jaime was not to flirt with her because she was shy. She wasn't shy; she was _real_ , and Tyrion was worried Jaime would taint her with his weary cynicism.

The thing about it was that Tyrion was right. Jaime _would_ taint Brienne, he had no doubt at all. The right thing to do was to keep their relationship neutral, and when they arrived in Manchester, to part amicably, and then never see each other again. Brienne deserved better than a disillusioned former playboy with one hand.

Damned shame, then, that he had no intention of doing the right thing. The infamous Lannister greed didn't often rear its ugly head in Jaime, but when it did, there was no way an appeal to his conscience was going to make him give up what he wanted.

And he wanted Brienne.


	7. you can read me anything

**Brienne**

Brienne shot Jaime an amused glance and took the exit toward the ferry. Her mind was abuzz as she replayed the last few minutes of their conversation in her mind. He was such a strange man: handsome as a god, but funny; smart, but personable; capable of being incredibly dorky, and perfectly comfortable with showing it.

The thing that had her most confused was the indisputable fact that he was attracted to her. The early flirting, she'd written off as just being a flirty guy, but as the hours had passed, and his behavior had remained consistent, she had started to consider that somehow, amazingly, he might actually mean what he was saying.

It was when she caught herself wondering about both his eyesight and his sanity that she realized she had to get a grip. She was ugly, yes, and too tall, and mostly titless, and had big manly hands. But apparently Jaime got off on tall ugly titless man-handed women, because she could not detect anything duplicitous in the way he kissed her, or the way he looked at her, like he was so damned happy to be doing it.

Or maybe it had to do with what her father and friends insisted was a good personality? She didn't think hers was any better than anyone else's. She tried to be decent. She worked hard. She didn't take herself too seriously. Maybe he knew so few nice people that when he met one— her— it knocked him for a loop? From the sound of his father, and how Tyrion sometimes said the most shockingly hurtful things about himself, that seemed like a strong contender for the reason why.

One thing she knew: she didn't want to have fallen in love with him once he got his need for pleasant companionship out of his system and realized that she was homely, gawky, and basically in no way deserving of his attentions. And she could fall in love with him. It was as clear as the weirdly-shaped nose on her face. It was just a matter of time.

And she had no intention of spending that time just to end up broken-hearted and lonelier than she'd been before. Even now, having finally experienced a kiss— and quite a humdinger, at that— she thought with mourning of her life once it returned to normal. Now, she knew what she was missing, and wouldn't experience again. She hoped the memory of it would fade quickly, but doubted it, since the whole damned thing seemed seared into her brain for all time.

The sensation of his lips on hers, the slide of his tongue, the scent of bay rum and warm male rising around them, his hands on her face and in her hair. She sighed, resigned to the knowledge that she'd be replaying it in her mind for a long time to come.

Anger sparked in her belly. It wasn't her fault she looked as she did. She did the best she could with what she had. It wasn't enough, or hadn't been, until Jaime. She knew this chance was not going to come again. She could resist him— somehow, gathering every scrap of fortitude she had— and spend the rest of her life alone, and wondering, or…

She could go along and see where it took her.

And when he was gone and she was alone again, at least she'd have one hell of a memory to look back on. She wouldn't have to end up a lifelong virgin, never to experience physical love, what it was like to share her body with someone and share his with him. She would expect nothing from him, make no plans beyond the immediate, and enjoy it as long as it lasted.

Which would probably just be this weekend, if she even saw him again once they'd arrived in Manchester. For all she knew, Jaime could just be entertaining himself with her for the duration of the drive, and once it was over, just blithely walk away. It wouldn't be the first time it had happened to her.

Probably wouldn't be the last, either.

Brienne let out another sigh, pushing her negative thoughts out with her breath. This time, she was done pretending she didn't want love and lust and companionship. This time, she would take a chance.

They were approaching the ferry terminal. Jaime insisted on paying since she had gotten the motel room and breakfast. They had only a short wait until it was time to board, and soon enough, they were leaving the car in the belly of the ship.

"You made the last one," said the attendant. "With the storm brewing, they're not running any more after this one." He added, "Hope you have good sea legs and strong stomachs, it's choppy out there."

"I grew up on the Outer Banks," Brienne told Jaime as they climbed flight after flight of stairs to take them topside. "Spent half my childhood in one boat or another."

"We did a lot of sailing," Jaime replied. "Had a little sailboat of my own, before…" He held up his right arm. "Maybe others could do it one-handed, but I can't."

"I could—" she began, but then stopped. I could do it with you, she almost said. We'd have three hands between us, that would be plenty.

"Could…?" he prompted, but she shook her head and smiled.

Once on the deck, they found a table in the snug little café and settled in for the trip. He got another cup of coffee, and Brienne got hot chocolate. More and more people hurried in, rubbing together cold hands and calling for hot drinks. Soon the café was packed and stifling, and she was longing to go outside for some fresh air and space.

Jaime finished his coffee and stared out the window, seeming preoccupied, so Brienne felt safe to indulge herself and stare at him. He'd shucked his shearling jacket and sat there in the snug brown Henley that made the most of his impressive body and coloring. His neck, his jaw, his hair, his cheekbones, his lips, that nose, even his forehead and the shape of his eye sockets: the man looked like he'd been carved instead of born.

He glanced at her, suddenly, catching her watching him. "Did you not have enough breakfast?"

"Whuh?" she said intelligently. "Yes, why?"

"You look hungry."

I am, she thought. I'm starving for you. But she just smiled and shook her head again.

"I'd like to go outside, actually. You can stay in here, if you're cold…?"

"No, that sounds good." He stood and put his jacket back on, then went so far as to take her hand and lead her through the throng crowding around the counter. Brienne felt extremely odd, holding hands with him like that. Like they were together, like it was natural and mundane for a couple to do such a thing.

Once outside, she breathed deeply of the salt air and studied the waves pushing the ferry around. The sky overhead was gray, not the same iron-gray as the water, but a delicate, smoky hue that looked as if it would be soft to the touch. The cold air scoured anything not covered by her pashmina, but she ignored the chill on her legs and face. They were still in sight of land, and she faced forward, eager for the moment when there would be nothing but sea around them. She lived for moments such as that, when she felt alone in all the world, just a private little slice of ocean for herself.

Her fingers twitched on the frigid metal railing, but she didn't notice until Jaime placed his hand over them.

"You want to play, right now, don't you?" he asked her, and she turned to find him watching her, his face serious and his eyes curiously gentle.

Brienne nodded. "Any time I see something beautiful, it just feels like it needs music."

"I know how you feel." He smiled at her, and she got the feeling they were talking about different things.

Then he shivered.

"Oh, you're cold," she said. "We should go back inside."

"No, it's just… I can't close my jacket," he said, carefully avoiding her gaze.

That's right, with only one hand… she thought.

"Let me," she murmured, and began to fasten the bone toggles down the front of his jacket. He stood quietly, letting her, and when she looked up, she saw him looking at her again.

"I feel like a toddler getting dressed by his mother, but thanks," he said wryly. But it wasn't long before he was shivering again.

"Can I—" he gestured toward her pashmina. "Can I share your blanket thing?"

Brienne frowned at him. "It's not a blanket thing," she sniffed. "It's a pashmina."

He looked at her with pity. "Whatever gets you through the day. Can we share?"

"It's not big enough for two," she grumbled, but obediently held out one side to him. He immediately took advantage of her generosity to cram himself right up against her, tugging it around his shoulders, and they ended up pressed together rather more intimately than the setting called for.

"Well, this is awkward," she said. Their faces were a hair's breadth apart. She couldn't stop looking at his mouth.

"Doesn't have to be," Jaime replied. "How do you want to work this? We can cuddle face-to-face, or we can do like Titanic. You stand behind me and I'll pretend to be the selfish girl who hogged the door in the end."

He turned to face away from her, his body brushing all along hers and making her catch her breath. Once he faced forward, he nestled back against her, stretched out his arms, and shouted, "I'm king of the world!"

"Oh my god," Brienne muttered, trying— and failing— to keep from laughing but just ending up giggling into his shoulder. "She wasn't the one who said that, it was him."

"Don't kill my moment," he said grandly. "Let me enjoy myself."

"You're the strangest man I've ever met. I don't even know how you function in society."

That sobered him, and he turned in the circle of her pashmina to face her again. She felt bad at how serious he'd gotten, and wondered at the suddenness.

"I do a lot of pretending," he told her, his eyes steady on hers. "About everything."

She didn't know what to say to that; it was raw and honest on a level she definitely wasn't ready for. But it deserved some honesty in return, that much she knew, so she replied, "Me, too."

Because it was true. Brienne went through life seeming like a woman at peace, who was happy with herself, and with her career and her home and her friends, but she wasn't. She was worried about her father, living so far away; she worried about making so little money, and then she worried about what would happen to the orchestra if she left it. She was damned lonely, but so often away from home to travel with the orchestra she couldn't even have a pet. She tried to fill the void by making her apartment as cozy and comfortable as possible, but it didn't really work.

She'd really like to have sex one day, too, but that event seemed far, far in the future. If at all.

Or it had, until…

Brienne raised her eyes from where she'd been staring at Jaime's mouth, and met his, which had been staring at hers.

"You're probably crazy," she informed him.

"No probably about it. Haven't felt right since yesterday. Around the time I met you, as a matter of fact."

"Gave you indigestion, I bet. I do that to a lot of people."

"Our breakfast is to blame for that. My gallbladder may never forgive you."

"Please offer it my apologies. I was aiming for your pancreas."

"With the amount of sugar you ate, your pancreas is the one you seem to have targeted."

"…why are we talking about my pancreas?" Brienne asked, confused. "What the hell are we talking about at all?"

"I can't remember," said Jaime. "I stopped paying attention when you started looking at my mouth."

He inched even closer; she inched back. They repeated this maneuver until they'd gone a whole foot, trapped together by the confines of her pashmina.

"I wasn't looking at your mouth," she protested feebly.

"You were," Jaime said. "It's okay, I was looking at yours, too. And remembering how it felt to kiss you. And wanting to kiss you again."

"You are… the most forthright man I've ever met," she said, feeling breathless and unsure if it were due to him or the cold snatching the air from her lungs.

"Only with you. I lie my ass off to everyone else."

"Why just with me?"

"I want you to know me. The actual me. Not the one I give to everyone else."

"But why me? I'm no one special at all." The question Brienne had been asking herself, and god, and the universe in general since he'd kissed her last night, burst from her without permission. Why in the hell was the best-looking man outside the motion picture industry paying her any attention at all? In fact, he actually seemed to be pursuing her. After a lifetime of men leaving skidmarks in their haste to flee from her, she needed answers.

"If you really believe that, you're even crazier than I am," Jaime said, and kissed her.

The same warm golden haze overtook her, just as it had the two previous times they'd kissed. The cold wind faded away, the self-consciousness of being watched by curious or scornful bystanders didn't even rear its ugly head. Cocooned in her pashmina, they had their own little world. Brienne gave herself up to it, her hand on his cold, stubbly cheek as their lips moved against each other.

It wasn't a passionate kiss, not like last night's. More like this morning's, just a gentle exploration, but it tasted worryingly of… affection. Like there was more to it than curiosity, or even just attraction. Brienne opened her eyes and drew back. Jaime opened his, too, and looked at her so intently that her stomach flipped over.

Then he smiled and said, "How does that keep getting better?"


	8. the book of love has music in it

**Jaime**

"But why me? I'm no one special at all." She said, and really seemed to believe it, too. There was honest confusion on her face. Jaime had that weird sensation, yet again, of being angry on her behalf for being treated so poorly that she'd come to believe herself unattractive, and being relieved that everyone had left her alone so she was available to him.

"If you really believe that, you're even crazier than I am," Jaime said, and kissed her.

This was their third kiss, and it was different from the previous two. The first had been passionate, when he'd been so affected by watching her play the violin. The second had been delicate, more of a suggestion of a kiss, really. This one, though… there was tenderness to it, and their lips moved against each other with more precision, more expertise with each other's mouths.

Brienne was so warm against him, and wrapped up in her blanket thing, he felt like they were in their own little universe. Jaime felt like he could have just stood there, kissing her, forever, and even after she pulled back, he stood there a moment longer, eyes closed, wanting to linger just a moment more.

When he finally opened them again, it was to see her looking at him. He loved that they were so similar in height. It made the kiss… comfortable. She didn't have to stretch up, he didn't have to lean down. She was right there, their eyes and mouths perfectly aligned to each other. Seemed like an omen to him.

The thought made him smile, and he asked, "How does that keep getting better?"

He already knew, of course. They were learning each other. He could tell, by now, that Brienne liked when he ran his tongue along the outer edge of hers, and when he slid his lips from side to side against her own. And Brienne had quickly come to understand his enjoyment of dueling the tips of their tongues, and that biting his lower lip was a fast-track to turning him on.

But Brienne scowled and turned her head to look out toward the water, and where the ferry terminal had come into view.

"I think you're some sort of sex magician," she muttered, looking and sounding so disgruntled that Jaime began to laugh and couldn't stop. He laughed when the announcement came to return to their cars, and while they went down a hundred flights of stairs to search for their rental SUV. He was still emitting the odd giggle three hours later, when they left New Jersey behind for a brief foray into New York.

"Enough already," Brienne said mildly, rolling her head on the headrest to took at him. She looked relaxed, and sleepy, and amused, and he was so damned content that he wanted to prolong the day as much as possible.

"Let's get some lunch," he said. "You pick where."

She quirked a platinum eyebrow. "Is that safe? I picked where we went for breakfast and that didn't go so well for you."

"Ah, good point," he said with an exaggerated grimace. "I know this place… do you trust me?"

Jaime couldn't decipher the look she gave him; her glorious eyes had gone opaque.

"Sure," she murmured, which was no answer at all, really, and closed her eyes to put her head back on the seat rest for another hour.

Halfway into Connecticut, Jaime exited the highway and drove them into a bitty little town that looked like it was fresh from a period film set in the 19th century, all its buildings in perfect condition as they rambled along a curvy little river. It had started to snow, dusting the trees and buildings with a fluffy layer of white, and looked ethereal even to Jaime's long-used-to-it eyes.

"Oooh," Brienne said, her face pressed to the window as she took in the pristine Neoclassical and Victorian architecture. "Where are we?"

"Lannisport," he said. "Where my family is from, actually."

"Ah, Lannister, Lannisport, yes," she said, then did this thing with her eyebrows and blinking that communicated that she was both surprised and impressed at the same time. Jaime thought she had to have the most fascinating face in the world.

He pulled into the parking lot of a building set right on the river, and parked by the sign featuring the restaurant's name and a pouncing lion in gold on a red background.

"Lion's Den," Brienne said, not really to him so much as just thinking out loud. He was beginning to see she talked to herself quite often.

Inside was the same polished wooden floors and stone walls and roaring fireplaces he was used to after a lifetime of patronizing the place, and the hostess greeted him warmly.

"Mr. Lannister! Your usual table?"

"Yes, thanks, Marie."

She led them to a table in a corner overlooking the river and left them with menus. Moments later, a waiter approached with glasses of water and took their requests for coffee (Jaime) and tea (Brienne).

"I'm starting to understand why you were appalled by Waffle House," she said while studying the menu. "This all looks amazing."

"It had better," he said. "I went through hell getting that chef to work here."

She glanced up in surprise. "You manage this place?"

"Own it. Or at least the family company does. Lannister Enterprises owns dozens of restaurants around the world."

"So you really know good food, then." A faint blush glowed on her cheeks. "And I did not provide that you this morning."

"This morning was fun." He smiled and reached across the table, taking her hand before amending his statement in the interest of honesty. "Okay, the food was gross, but the company could not be better."

The waiter arrived, bearing warm rolls and butter, and Brienne ordered fish tacos while Jaime asked for jambalaya.

"If you look up the river, just before it curves to the right," he said, pointing, "that big brick house?"

"Big brick mansion, you mean?" she said, smiling. "Yes?"

"That's our place. Where we grew up. Casterly Rock, it's called."

Her incredible eyes were wide as she took that in. "It's… it looks amazing."

"I'd love to show it to you sometime." He wanted to watch her face as she took in the marble tile floors, the carved banisters, the leaded glass windows, the twelve-foot ceilings with plaster rosettes and chandeliers. "The ballroom has incredible acoustics. You'd sound amazing in it."

But instead of a positive reaction, Brienne's smile faded a bit, replaced by a more guarded look, and he wondered why.

"Hmmm," was all she said, and busied herself by buttering a roll.

Jaime felt unaccountably rebuffed. He hid it behind his usual smooth mask and began to torture a roll into submission, trying to split and butter it with only one hand, when Brienne smoothly plucked it from him and replaced it with the one she'd just prepared. Setting the mangled one aside, she took her knife and cut open another for herself.

He stared down at the roll in his hand for a long moment, swallowing past the lump in his throat. Everyone else pretended not to notice him struggling with food. His father and Cersei because they seemed to think that if they ignored his disability, it wouldn't really exist, and he wouldn't be such an embarrassing cripple. Tyrion, because he didn't want to treat Jaime like he was handicapped, any more than he wanted Jaime to treat him like that.

His business acquaintances had no idea how to cope with such a thing and likely deemed it unprofessional to acknowledge it. His past girlfriends had felt themselves above such menial tasks as helping him with something so mundane. He'd had to become used to getting himself food that didn't need cutting, and could be eaten with only one hand.

Brienne had observed his problem, not been repulsed by it, addressed it, and was now chewing happily on her own roll while gazing at the river, as if she had not turned his entire world upside down, sewn up the jagged rent in his heart, torn down the foundations of his life and rebuilt them, all in the space of thirty seconds or so.

She noticed him staring at her, and smiled. "Do we have time for dessert, too? I'd kill for some cheesecake."

He'd pull the moon from the sky and present it to her, if she wanted it.

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "We'll just drive a little faster to make it up."

Her smile widened. He wished they weren't in the middle of a restaurant so he could kiss her, wished they were somewhere he could hold her, wished he could make love to her, wished for everything.

Their food arrived. They talked while they ate, about her joining Tyrion's orchestra, and how she missed the Outer Banks but loved living in New Hampshire, and the new friends she'd made there. Jaime described how he worked as the president of Lannister Enterprises, now that his father was deceased, even though he could have just lived off the company's profits like his sister did.

"I'd be too bored," he said. "I'm not really the idle playboy type."

That had made her laugh so hard he was almost offended, but then she patted his hand to sooth the sting of her amusement and he didn't mind so much.

They shared a slice of cheesecake. Jaime decided to give the chef a raise when Brienne declared it the best she'd ever had. Soon, they were back in the car, Brienne behind the wheel once more, and Jaime found himself lulled into a nap by his full belly and the warm comfort of the car's interior.

Until Brienne woke him with a gentle hand on his knee.

"Sorry," she said, "but could you take over driving?"

He looked around to see she had pulled them into a rest area on the highway.

"Sure," he said, taking in the pinched expression on her face. She looked worried, with two little lines over her nose in a perfect '11'. "What's wrong?"

"It's snowing a lot, and I'm not used to driving on snow at highway speeds. I waited as long as I could because you looked so peaceful, but…"

"It's no problem," he told her, pitching his voice to a soothing tone, and couldn't resist leaning over to kiss her, right on the eleven. "I'm great at driving in snow."

Her shoulders lowered and she seemed to relax before his eyes.

"Thanks," she said after they'd switched seats and were back on the road. They'd entered Massachusetts while he slept, he saw. Only a few hours left. "It's just that I'm from North Carolina. We don't get snow like this. I never leave town or go faster than about forty-five when it's like this in Manchester."

"No problem." He wished he had two hands again, so he could steer with one and hold hers with the other. "You can have a nap, now."

She protested, but within a half-hour she had covered herself with her blanket thing and was fast asleep, letting out the cutest little huffing snore with every breath.

The snow and road conditions worsened the farther north they went, despite determined plowing by the highway authority. By the time they entered New Hampshire, the highway was closed and Jaime was forced to take local roads. He switched to four-wheel-drive and kept doggedly on. Brienne had to make it to her damned performance, and he'd get her there if it killed him.

She woke when her phone rang.

"Tyrion?" she said, her voice blurry from sleep. "What's— what? Are you serious? Goddammit, Tyrion."

She slumped back against the seat. Jaime kept glancing at her, wondering what his brother had done to annoy her, and fascinated by how annoyance looked on her: her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling, her breath coming faster… for the first time, he understood why men liked making women angry. It made them look as if they were aroused. He felt a jolt of arousal himself, at the thought.

Down, boy, he admonished himself. Not the time.

"Fine, fine, fine," Brienne was grumbling. "Fine. Yes. Fine. No. No! Okay."

She capitulated easily, he thought with amusement. He knew the feeling well, when dealing with Tyrion.

When she hung up, he turned to her with an inquiring brow raised.

"He canceled the performance," she said flatly. "All that panicking and hard work getting here on time. For nothing."

"Well," he said, "the roads are pretty terrible, so…"

"Are they?" For the first time since waking up, she really looked out the car windows and took in the world around them. There were already tall drifts to either side of the road, thrown from the plows, with more coming down in huge, heavy flakes. The road was caked with a few inches of hard-compressed snow, and at that moment, they passed a car that had skidded halfway down the embankment while a policeman made his way toward where the driver climbed out of his vehicle.

"Oh, god, Jaime…" she said, looking back at him. "This is bad! This is dangerous! You should have woken me earlier, we could have stopped at a hotel or something for the night instead of pushing on. Why didn't you?"

"You had to get to your performance," he said, not taking his eyes off the road as he navigated them down a small hill. "Didn't want to make you miss it."

She said nothing, and when he stopped at a light, he looked over to find her staring at him, her mouth parted in soft confusion.

"Jaime…" she sighed, and reached out to brush the back of her fingers against his cheek.

A weird sensation tightened his chest. To his shock, he felt his face heat. Was he… embarrassed, since she clearly knew he'd gone to such lengths for her? He could not remember the last time he'd been embarrassed about anything, and ducked his chin to his chest, wishing he could turn away from her. Hide a little. God.

"It's just that I'm good in snow, and I put the four-wheel-drive on, and…" He ran out of excuses.

Her laughter was warm and gentle, and he felt his awkwardness fade.

"Thank you," she said. Then, more businesslike, "So if I don't have to go to the music hall, can you just take me home?"

"Of course. Just give me directions."

She provided them, and within an hour Jaime pulled up in front of a gigantic Queen Anne house.

"Will you… will you come in? For a few minutes?" she said, looking and sounding a bit shy. "Use the bathroom, have some coffee, before heading to Tyrion's?"

Jaime didn't want to leave her here. Everything in him protested it. After spending the last twenty-four hours in her company, he almost couldn't recall what it was like to be without it.

"Yes," he said firmly. "I'd like that."

As they left the car and Brienne collected her bag, she sighed.

"Good to be home?" he asked her, and she smiled.

"In a way. North Carolina will always be my real home, but I do miss my nice little apartment when I leave it."

She let them into a foyer smelling of beeswax furniture polish, and then up two flights of stairs.

"I live in the attic," she explained, and unlocked the door. It slid open, instead of swung, and after they'd tugged off their boots to leave on the landing, she stood back to let him enter first.

His eyes were met with the homiest, coziest, most comfortable-looking space he'd ever seen. One big square in the center, with eaves on all sides forming a cross-shape, it seemed furnished entirely with found items, as if collected over a lifetime or inherited from great-aunts with a taste for humble-yet-practical things.

The sofa was upholstered with a crazy quilt, the lampshades were mad things with long strings of beads swinging along the edge, the kitchen appliances were all vintage dinosaurs from the 50's, and there were musical instruments and plants everywhere.

There was no color scheme, no real rhyme or reason to anything, all of it mismatched and worn and so appealing Jaime almost felt a little dizzy with shock that a home could feel like a home, instead of just a place to keep your clothes and take a shower every day.

Apparently he'd been standing there, gaping, for too long because Brienne grinned and then surprised him by bumping his hip with her own.

"I guess you could call me a crap whisperer," she said cheerfully. "I go to estate sales and flea markets and bring home things other people would throw away, and then I find ways to make them fun or beautiful." She shrugged. "It's saved me a bundle over buying everything new."

There was a note in her voice that grabbed Jaime's attention. Was she having money troubles? He had no idea what a cellist should make, especially not one who worked for the orchestra of a small city instead of one of the more prominent ones. He tried to read more in her face, but she had turned away toward the kitchen to get started on the promised coffee.

"Do you have decaf?" he asked, padding after her in his socks. The kitchen looked well-used and practical, a place he could imagine her baking delicious things to share with friends.

"Sorry, but I have herbal tea?" At his nod, she took a box from a shelf on the wall. "Go sit, get comfortable. I'll be out in a minute."

Obediently, Jaime made his way to the sofa, sitting on the crazy quilt, then letting out an undignified yelp when he sank down into it far deeper than he'd expected.

"I call it the butt-sucking couch," Brienne called from the kitchen, a laugh in her voice. "It's stuffed with actual goose down. Really comfortable, but once it's got you, it's hard to escape."

Jaime relaxed into it and felt almost like a choir of angels had come to serenade him.

"This is the best thing I've ever sat on," he groaned, his eyes falling shut in bliss. "My ass will never be satisfied with anything else, ever again."

Her laugh came from close by, and he opened his eyes to find she'd sat beside him at some point, and he'd not even felt it because of the density of the sofa or whatever upholstery-related sorcery she had performed on it.

"Your poor ass," she pretended to sympathize, but there was a light in her eyes that told him she was laughing at him.

"It will never be the same," he told her softly. Nothing about him would be, not after today.

Her smile faded slowly, and they just gazed at each other a long moment. Brienne lifted her hand, brushed it over his cheek as she'd done in the car earlier. He took it in his own, pressed it to his mouth, kissed it, looking into her eyes as he did.

But he didn't lean forward, though he felt like he'd die if he didn't kiss her in the next five seconds. He wanted to know he wasn't pushing her into anything. Wanted to see if she felt it just as strongly as he did. Wanted to learn if she had the nerve to make the first move, this time.

Turns out, she did, because she leaned in and rubbed her nose against his before joining their mouths. Jaime had just enough time to part his lips, to feel hers cling to his, when the teakettle began to shriek.

She pulled back with a wry expression, and hopped up to attend to it. Jaime sat back once more and let the sofa welcome him into its feathery bosom.

Within moments, however, Brienne was sticking her head back into the living room from the kitchen. "Jaime, come look at this," she said, sounding worried.

He extracted himself from the butt-sucking couch and went to her. She stood at the kitchen window, arms folded at her waist as she looked outside.

"What am I looking at?" he asked. He placed his hands on her waist and leaned in, putting his chin on her shoulder to gaze out the window. She tensed a little before relaxing back into him.

Outside, it was the expected scene of falling snow, and waist-high drifts, with the addition of a large SUV-shaped mound where their rental had been.

"Oh," he said. It was barely an inch more of snow than when they'd come inside.

"You can't go anywhere in that," Brienne said. "Especially not being familiar with the streets."

Inwardly, Jaime was celebrating, thrilled to have an excuse to remain here in this snug apartment with her. Outwardly, he said, "Yeah. Looks dangerous."

"You… you should stay here." She turned to face him, but he didn't move back, so she was pressed up against him just as closely as they had been on the ferry. Concern made the eleven appear over her nose again. He stroked his thumb over it, smoothing it away, then running it over the sleek line of her eyebrow.

"Only if I won't be a bother." He didn't want to stay if she truly didn't want him there, if she felt imposed upon or pressured in any way.

"You've been a bother since the moment we met," she shot back, with humor. "If I survived a whole day with you, I think I can make it through the night, too."

"I'll try not to make you run screaming into the snow drifts," he replied, and brushed a kiss over her smile before stepping away. "Have to go get my bag from the car."

He bundled back up, and let her force a knit cap on him. As he descended the steps, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Tyrion.

"Still alive, I see," his brother drawled. "When should we expect you?"

"Tomorrow," Jaime told him. "The roads are a mess. Brienne is making me stay over."

He could almost hear Tyrion's eyebrows lifting up to his hairline. "Making you?"

"Nothing I could do about it," he said blithely. "My hands— hand— are tied. Is tied. You know what I mean."

"Yes, you're utterly helpless to deny a woman who has no power over you whatsoever," Tyrion snarked.

Jaime stepped out into the winter wonderland and stomped through the snow to the car. "She has more power over me than you might think."

He opened the back door and withdrew his own bag. When he slammed the door shut, snow fell from the roof to cascade over his chest, covered only by his shirt since he hadn't bothered to close his jacket. He sighed and started back inside.

"Tyrion?" he said after his brother hadn't replied for a few extended moments.

"Jaime." Tyrion said, his voice lacking its usual sardonic tone. Jaime went on alert, and stopped where he stood at the foot of the stairs leading up to Brienne's apartment.

"Yeah?" he prompted.

"Don't do this to her," said Tyrion. "She's not like the women you're used to."

"I know that," Jaime replied. "That's why I like her."

"No, I mean…" Tyrion blew out a breath. "She's not like us. She doesn't understand easy sex. She's going to start caring about you, and you're going to leave, like you always do, and it'll break her heart."

"I think this time, it's more likely that she'll break mine," Jaime said, feeling a bit terrified but needing to mention it to someone.

Tyrion took a moment before replying. "Like that, is it?" he said at last.

"Yeah."

"It sure takes you by surprise, doesn't it?" Tyrion asked, sounding more happy. "I had one look at this glorious creature at my side and knew I was done for. No other woman would ever be able to compare."

"What are you talking about?" asked Shae in the background.

"Jaime's fallen in love with Brienne," Tyrion told her.

"For god's sake," Jaime muttered, pulling off the cap and swiping his hand through his hair in exasperation.

"I've always thought your brother was smarter than you give him credit for," came Shae's approving voice. Then, louder, "Jaime, behave yourself. If you hurt her, I'll never make you ropa vieja again."

"A fate worse than death," he mumbled, only exaggerating a little. Shae's ropa vieja was the stuff of culinary fantasies.

Brienne came out onto the landing to see where he was, arms around her waist again as she shivered in the unheated space. There was gladness in her smile when she saw him there.

"Get up here, slowpoke," she laughed.

She looked so warm and soft and sweet, her legs drawing his gaze in those damned tights, and he couldn't think of a single place he'd rather be in that moment.

So he got up there.


	9. it's where music comes from

**Brienne**

Brienne had a feeling she was making one humdinger of a mistake, having Jaime stay the night with her, but she was truly scared for him to drive in the storm. As a native Southerner, her fear of snow was something she should not entirely conquer, and the idea of him risking his life made her feel a little ill.

Especially since it was so easily remedied.

She just had to get past her terror of what might happen, because she was not entirely sure she'd be able to keep her hands off of him. His smiles, his touches, his kisses… all day long, they'd been chipping away at any apprehensions she might have harbored about the wisdom of having sex with him. At this point, even if things did end in disaster, she was pretty sure the experience would still end up being worth it.

She poured boiling water in the tea bags and set them to steep, then frowned, thinking that he was taking a long time to come back— had he slipped and fallen? She slid open the door and stepped onto the landing to see where he was, and found him standing at the bottom of the stairs, his cell phone at his ear.

His golden hair was in disarray, the tip of his nose was red from cold, and there was snow all down his chest. He looked silly, and wonderful, and she had to smile at that.

"Get up here, slowpoke," she said with a laugh.

He grinned back and hung up, taking the stairs two at a time. When he passed her to go through the door, he planted a quick, hard kiss on her mouth, leaving her standing there, blinking, in the cold.

"Boots…" she said weakly, as he carried snow into the apartment on them and she stepped on a clump of it, soaking her sock.

"Ah, sorry." He set his bag down and walked past her to leave the boots, kissing her again as he went. Then, on his third pass, bootless, he kissed her yet once more.

"Are you going to kiss me every time you walk by me?" she asked, peeling off her wet sock.

"Pretty much." He watched her over the rim of his mug of tea as he drank. "Feel free to return the favor whenever you like."

She rolled her eyes and went to fetch another pair of socks from the gable that served as her bedroom. When she returned, Jaime had reclaimed his place on the butt-sucking couch and found the TV remote, scrolling through channels.

"Um," she said, drawing his attention. She stood there awkwardly, feeling like a bad host, but… "I need to play for a while, and I can't have the TV on while I do…"

"Oh." He seemed to take it in perfect stride, and switched the TV off without complaint. "Go ahead. I'll just sit here and stare at you while you play."

She frowned at him. "Great, that won't make me feel self-conscious."

"You'll forget I'm here within a minute," Jaime said with a flash of a smile. He pulled out his phone. "I'll just read while you play."

"Ah. Good." He was a reader? That was unexpected. Brienne made her way to where her cello sat in its stand by her hard-backed chair. Sitting, she positioned it between her knees just so, running her hand over its sinuous curves and checking the strings.

"You've missed it, haven't you?" he asked.

She looked up to find him watching her, his gaze soft.

"Yes," she replied. "The violin is wonderful, but it's just not my cello." She gave it a fond pat.

"Would you play the same thing you did last night?" Jaime asked.

"I don't know if I should." She shot him a wary glance. "It seemed to make you go a little haywire."

He surprised her with a laugh. "Brienne," he told her patiently, "you could play the theme to _Friends_ and I'd go haywire."

They stared at each other for a long, electric moment, and then Brienne drew the bow over the strings, playing the first few bars of the _Friends_ theme, making him laugh again.

"Yep," he said, "definitely feeling a little unstable."

She tsked at him, smiling, and then got down to business, thinking about what to play. She decided on one of her favorites, Prokofiev's opus 125, and let out a relieved breath as she began.

It was, as always, even better in private than when she was performing, because then, she always had to keep a part of her mind aware of her surroundings, of Tyrion's conducting, of the performance of the other strings, in case someone broke tempo or went off-key.

Here, in her home, alone— or with just an audience of one, as the case might be— she could just release herself to the music, enjoying the complete immersion of being in it.

And oh, it was good, after four days away. The violin hadn't done the job, or perhaps her need had been greater than it could satisfy, but the joy that permeated her as she pulled the notes from her cello was just incredible.

When she got to the end, and there was a series of measures featuring quick notes and nimble fingerwork, she felt herself breathing hard from the effort, faster as the notes climbed higher, and then, with a high-pitched final trill, she was done.

Panting, satisfied, she opened her eyes, expecting to find Jaime either asleep or concentrating on his book. Instead, he was staring at her with a look on his face that was almost wild.

"Are you done?" he asked, and his voice was lower than she'd ever heard it.

"Yes."

He stood, with more grace than anyone else had ever managed from the butt-sucking couch, and stalked, lionish, over to where she sat. He took the cello from her suddenly-numb fingers and replaced it on its stand, then did the same for her bow. Then he took her hand to tugged her to her feet.

"You are the sexiest woman I've ever seen," he told her.

"That's ridic—" she began, her denial immediate, but then he was kissing her.

And just like last night, she went up like a struck match, desire flaming between them. She whimpered into his mouth when his tongue gave a long stroke down the side of hers, and tangled her hands in his hair, pulling gently until he moaned back.

His arm was like a band of iron around her waist; his hand roamed down her neck to her back, and then lower, to grab her backside and pull her against him. Also iron-like was the erection he pressed between her legs, and she let out a cry to feel it stroke right against her center.

"God, you're so responsive," he muttered against her lips.

"How can I not be?" she panted. "You're doing everything exactly right."

Jaime groaned and kissed her again, harder, his urgency contagious, making Brienne kiss him back just as avidly. She moved her hands over his shoulders— she _loved_ his shoulders— and down his arms before reaching for his ass. His well-fitted jeans had hinted of the treasure within, but as she curved her hands around each cheek, she realized what a fool she'd been. It was so much better than she'd suspected. She might even like his ass more than his shoulders, and that was saying something.

He bucked against her, at that, and his erection ground between her legs again. She hissed at the sensation.

"Brienne," Jaime gasped. " _Please_."

"Yes. Bedroom." She didn't want to waste time talking when she could be kissing him, and began moving backward toward where her bed was tucked in its gable. Jaime followed like a thrall, mindlessly kissing her, caressing her, and when her legs hit the edge of her bed, she sighed in relief and pulled away from him so she could lay back on the mattress. He wasted no time crawling up the bed over her.

"I can't wait to peel those tights off you," Jaime was saying as he trailed his mouth down her throat. "And have your legs wrapped around my waist."

For a man with only one hand, it seemed to be everywhere at once: stroking her neck, cupping her breast, sliding down her belly, finding the hem of her sweater and camisole and pushing both up to her waist. When his cool palm found the warm skin of her midriff, she sucked in a breath.

"Sorry," he muttered, and shifted to press his lips to where she'd been chilled. Then she laughed as he burrowed under her sweater, trailing kisses up her chest. Her hands fisted in his shirt and began to tug it up, wanting to touch his skin.

Jaime freed himself from her sweater and reared up on his knees to grab the neck of his shirt and pull it off. Looming over her like that, hair mussed and his eyes bright with desire, Brienne almost felt dizzy with lust. All of that was hers, if only for the night. She pulled off the sweater, and after a moment of hesitation, the camisole underneath as well.

He made a noise of pleasure in his throat at the sight of her bare breasts, which she thought was frankly unrealistic but wasn't going to quibble about, since he stretched back over her and his chest was pressed her hers and his skin was hot and his chest hair was soft and ticklish against her nipples and he was kissing her again.

She shifted her legs until she could part them, and he slid down into the cradle of her hips, moaning when his erection pressed right against her center. Propping himself on one elbow, he ran his hand down her hip and thigh to her knee, pulling until her leg was wrapped around his waist. Then he kissed her again, and this time moved his hips against her in the same motion as his tongue in her mouth.

Brienne gasped against his mouth as heat streaked outward from where they were grinding together. She could feel how wet she had gotten, so wet her panties were clinging to her in yet another contribution to the sensory overload she was experiencing.

Now Jaime trailed his mouth down her throat, making a beeline for her nipples. Brienne almost choked on her tongue when he closed his lips around one, the feeling of suction around it unlike anything she'd ever felt before, so so good in the way it sent bolts of arousal through her.

When he switched from one breast to the other, she thought she heard him mutter something about champagne, but that didn't make any sense. She just ignored it and threaded her fingers into his hair, holding him tighter against her, and when he moaned, she realized he enjoyed having his hair tugged. She panted, overwhelmed by how sexy he was to her, and then his hand was at her waist and tugging at her tights.

She reached down to help him, and together they peeled them off. Jaime's breath was harsh in the dim little room as his eyes swept down the length of her thighs, his gaze scorching every inch as it was revealed.

"The thighs of a goddess," he breathed, "just as I said."

Then he fell on her like a starved man, startling a laugh out of her when he pressed his face to her belly and rubbed it back and forth, ticklish. He slid his arm under her hips, propping them up, and used his hand to drag down her panties, barely waiting until they had fallen to the floor before his mouth was on her.

Brienne almost shouted at the feel of his tongue slipping between her drenched folds, and grabbed his hair once more. He hummed against her, and she _writhed_. This was so different than she'd imagined, by herself in the bed with one toy or another. Softer, slicker, almost unbearably intimate. She didn't think she'd have been able to bear it with anyone else, but this was him. _Jaime_. She'd wanted him the moment she'd seen those shoulders, and it had built steadily up to this moment. Inevitable, really; why had she fought it for even those few hours?

"Brienne," he said, and began kissing his way back up her body again. "Would you hate me if I moved on to the main event now? Because I can't wait any longer."

He punctuated the question with a swirl of his tongue over her nipple, and she arched beneath him.

"Could never hate you," she gasped at the suction of his mouth on her tender flesh.

When he reached her face, he dropped a kiss on her mouth before kneeling up once more to push down his jeans. His eyes were bright and soft as he gazed down at her. "You're amazing."

Denial rushed to her lips, but then he was nude and she forgot how to speak. The bedroom was lit only by ambient light from the living room, butter-yellow bars of it falling across his muscled torso and limbs. His beauty was almost painful, and her breath juddered in and out as want pulsed through her.

"I'll come just from the way you're looking at me," said Jaime with a note of warning in his voice. "I won't even have to touch you."

The image of Jaime kneeling over her, semen jetting from him, made another wave of heat roll over her, and he groaned.

"Gonna have to wear a blindfold," he muttered, and settled himself over her once more. "I'm a weak man, Brienne. I can't withstand those eyes."

They both sucked in a breath at the feel of all that naked flesh pressed together. She bent her legs, sliding them up and around until she was wide open for him, so eager that any embarrassment she might have felt was forgotten, discarded, burned away with the force of her desire. Her hands slid around his waist, followed the long muscles of his back to where they met his neck, then down his shoulders to his biceps.

"You feel plenty strong to me—eeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooohhJaimeyesssssss."

He had positioned himself and pushed in as she spoke, and drove the ability to form words from her. He was bigger than her toys, and impossibly better: longer, thicker, hotter. No one had told her she'd be able to feel the way he throbbed so heavily inside her. The stretch burned, but in a good way. The _best_ way.

And it wasn't just a piece of rubber and plastic. And it wasn't just any man. It was _this_ man, who'd seduced her with his wry humor and complexity and lightning-quick mood changes and wit and surprising sweetness. She clasped him tighter, with arms and legs both, and he shuddered in the cage of her body.

Jaime dropped his head to her shoulder, holding himself very still and gasping to control himself.

Brienne thought it couldn't possibly get any better, but then he started to _move_ , and she was proven wrong. He thrust in and out far more strongly than she'd ever worked her toys, and it was as if a light bulb was switched on over her head as she realized how it might actually be possible to come from being penetrated, instead of just stimulation.

The most amazing sensations began to ripple outward from between her legs, and the sense of urgency she'd felt from the moment they'd begun kissing began to grow, to expand and thrive, until she felt almost frantic, straining against him, her hands gripping and pulling at his hips and shoulders.

Her crisis came upon her like a steamroller; one moment she was grabbing his marvelous ass and pulling him even deeper into her, and the next she was awash in ecstasy and wailing his name. She could _feel_ herself clenching rhythmically around him, and the sensation of it, gripping so tightly around something so big and deep, was devastating in its satisfaction.

Jaime went rigid against her, his entire body trembling, and then he began to move again, fucking into her so fast and hard that it prolonged her climax and sent her crashing into a second, coming so hard she shook against him.

It took her a long time to recover, for her breath and strength to return. She held Jaime tightly against her, within her as the last shudders of his orgasm faded.

"So that was sex," she said as he lifted his head from her shoulder. She managed a wobbly smile…

…until she saw his face. He looked… shocked. Absolutely thunderstruck. Brienne wondered why. She was feeling pretty good, herself, pleased with how it had not only lived up to her imaginings, but surpassed them by far. And he didn't seem disappointed; just the opposite. Had she… done something odd? Different? Unusual?

"Are you okay?" This was kind of weird, and not how she'd thought it would be. Wasn't the virgin supposed to be comforted after debauching, instead of the debaucher?

"I don't know," he said. "I think so. Or maybe not."

She blinked up at him. "You're going to have to translate that into something I can understand."

He blinked back, helplessly. "I don't think I can."

She gnawed on her bottom lip, thinking. "Can you tell me if I did alright, or if I was… bad? I need to know."

His lips parted in surprise. "You? You were… no. I've never— nothing. No one— yes. I didn't know… like that."

Brienne was starting to think his orgasm had damaged something in his brain. "Jaime?"

He closed his eyes. The light from the living room was just enough to see color come into his cheeks. He disengaged himself from her, and they both hissed at the sensation of his shaft sliding through her one last time. Then he collapsed at her side and lay there, panting and looking, frankly, quite wrecked.

She rolled to her side and stared at him for a while, again admiring the purity of his profile, watching the rise and fall of his chest. Soon, the cool winter air made her skin prickle, and she dragged a pashmina— this one bright orange— from the foot of the bed to cover them.

"Oh, another blanket thing," he murmured.

"It's a _pashmina_ ," she corrected. "You're very stubborn about this."

He rolled his head to the side and smiled at her, making her breath catch. "I can be stubborn about a lot of things, as you are going to find out."

That boded ill. "How do you mean?"


	10. some of it is transcendental

**Jaime**

Jaime felt like his soul had been pulled out of his dick; like he'd poured it into her, and might never get it back.

He was feeling pretty okay with that.

He'd never had sex like that before. He'd gotten off, both with women and on his own, but that had just been something that happened in the general area of his groin. A most excellent sensation, to be sure, but this…

 _This_ …

This had been something else entirely. This had been something that engaged his entire body. _This_ sex had taken him over from head to toe in some kind of massive brain orgasm that made him feel like he'd been electrocuted. Except instead of spasming in horrific pain, it had been the most intense, almost agonizing pleasure he'd ever experienced.

He hoped he still had use of his legs. He wasn't sure what parts of him would work, if he tried to use any of them at that moment. His mouth certain didn't; he was aware of speaking nonsense but couldn't really recall what _specific_ nonsense it was.

As the sweat dried off his body, he was very grateful to feel something soft and warm pulled over him.

"Oh, another blanket thing," he murmured happily. It felt wonderful against his oversensitive skin, but was on the small side for two people of their size. His feet were cold.

"It's a _pashmina_ ," she told him, sounding resigned but amused. "You're very stubborn about this."

He rolled his head to the side, unable to keep from smiling, just happy to see how her amazing eyes glinted in the dim light, looking lit by stars.

"I can be stubborn about a lot of things, as you are going to find out."

Those eyes widened in apprehension. "How do you mean?"

He reached out, intending to pat her in reassurance, but his arm just sort of flopped around. It was the one without the hand, so he wouldn't have been able to pat her, anyway. He settled for tapping his wrist against her arm.

"In just a minute, I am going to hug the hell out of you," he informed her.

"You are, huh?" The smile in her voice made him smile, too. "I consider myself warned, then."

"Or _you_ could hug _me_ , if you wanted to take the initiative," Jaime continued airily. He was starting to feel more himself. And regain sensation in his limbs.

"How about I take initiative and get us under the covers before we freeze?" Brienne suggested.

Jaime took a mental inventory of his body. Yep, everything was still there, somehow, excepting the already-missing hand. He sat up, the blanket thing falling to his lap, and looked to his side, where she still lay, a soft smile on her lips, her eyes starry and gentle.

"Up you get, then," he told her, wobbling to his feet. She did some wobbling of her own, and together they managed to fall into the bed and drag the covers over them. He reached for Brienne, and she curled into his arms as if it had been choreographed, their bodies fitting together like jigsaw pieces.

"So, seriously," she mumbled against his neck. "I was… okay?"

Jaime propped himself up on his elbow to stare down at her, incredulous. "Wench, you damn near killed me. I still don't have full use of my legs. I feel like I was shot into the surface of the sun. None of that has ever happened to me before."

He flopped onto his back, lacking the strength to hold himself up anymore. She nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder, wrapped an arm around his waist. Her breath was warm against his skin. He felt sleep pull at him, and faded out.

When he woke up again a few hours later, it was much as it had been the previous night, Brienne all tangled up with him. He unwound their legs and got up, needing the bathroom fiercely, and padded across the cold wood floor to where he thought it was, snagging his bag along the way.

Inside, he relieved himself, brushed his teeth, and then went to the kitchen where he found the forgotten mugs of herbal tea. Parched, he gulped one of them down, then picked up the other, intending to bring it to Brienne, but when he turned back, he found her standing there, a faint smile curling her lips.

She'd donned a nightshirt and slouchy socks and looked adorable, rumpled and sated, eyes sleepy and lips still swollen from his kisses.

He handed her the mug. She took it gratefully, drinking half while her eyes roamed over him in a proprietary manner, which he liked very much.

"You look pretty good, standing naked in my kitchen," she told him when the mug was empty.

"And how do I look standing naked in your living room?" he asked, walking to that room and posing artistically.

"Just as good," she said, putting the mugs in the sink and following. "But you know where you look best?"

"Where?"

Brienne gave him a heavy-lidded look that made his mouth go dry. "In my bed." Then she closed her eyes and grimaced. "God, that was cheesy."

"It worked anyway."

She opened her eyes, glancing down, and smiled at the reaction her words were giving him. "Already?"

"I'm a man of many talents, when properly inspired."

Although in truth he was a little amazed, himself. He was past his first bloom of youth, and hadn't recovered this quickly since before he'd lost his hand. He was also feeling a bit self-conscious, since Brienne was just standing there, looking at him with avid eyes.

"You're so beautiful," she murmured, her gaze flying up to meet his, a little sheepishly.

But instead of making feel proud of his body, he became more aware than ever of how grievously it was blemished, and angled himself so he could hide his handless arm.

"All of you," she continued, approaching. She grasped his forearm, tugged it towards her, pressed her cheek to where it ended abruptly at his wrist.

He cupped her face with his hand and pressed his forehead to hers, eyes closed. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you."

"How about you start by making love to me again?"

He opened his eyes to find her looking at him, smiling gently. "Well, if you ask so nicely…"

She took his hand and walked backward, tugging him along, while his erection bobbed in the breeze between them.

" _Please_ , Mr. Lannister, won't you _please_ come and have sex with me again?" she said in a voice full of dramatic pleading.

"Well, I suppose if _someone_ has to…" He heaved an equally dramatic sigh, the effect of which was completely ruined by the ridiculous grin stretching across his face.

In the bedroom, Brienne had switched on the little lamps on either side of the bed, illuminating the space with a warm glow. She pulled back the covers and gestured toward them like a game show hostess presenting a prize. "If you would sit up against the headboard, sir?"

Jaime obediently got comfortable as directed. Not only had he not had sex twice in the same night with anyone in recent history, but never in his life had there been an atmosphere of joking and affection like this. It felt like his heart would burst from happiness. He couldn't stop grinning.

…until Brienne positioned herself on her belly between his legs, propped up on her elbows, her face right over his cock. He stopped grinning, then.

"I've never had a chance to get up-close and personal with one of these," she murmured, running the tip of her index finger around and around the swollen crest.

"You should shake hands," Jaime told her in a strained voice. "Say hello. It's very pleased to meet you."

Turned out that her version of a greeting involved lots of luscious suction and exploratory tonguing on her part. What Brienne lacked in experience, she more than made up for with enthusiasm, and he was very glad he'd come once that night already because otherwise she'd have brought him within two minutes.

As it was, after that two minutes, he was gasping and begging her to stop.

"I want to… I want to… come in you," he panted, and her eyes flared like starbursts, making him groan.

She knelt up, studying him for a moment. Jaime wondered what she was seeing, how he looked to her. He _felt_ like a fiercely aroused man on the verge of falling in love. Wasn't sure how that appeared to others; could be as if he had heartburn, for all he knew.

Then, in a graceful motion, she swept her nightshirt off and moved until she was straddling his hips, placing her wet center right over his throbbing erection and sliding back and forth.

"Ungh," said Jaime, throwing his head back at the exquisite sensation, then groaning again because he'd bonked his head on the wall.

"Poor love," Brienne crooned, just a _little_ mockingly, coming up on her knees to press a kiss to the crown of his head.

Then she made his eyes cross when, upon coming back down, she sheathed him within her body, taking him to the base in one smooth glide.

"Ah—" she panted. "Ah— _Jaime_ —"

He gritted his teeth to keep from coming on the spot. She looked like a goddess, spread across his lap that way, those magnificent thighs framing his hips and her golden pubic hair mingling with his darker brown. Her head was tossed back, exposing the long line of her neck, and the expression on her face was of utter bliss.

"It feels like you're in my _throat_ ," she continued in a moan.

"Stop— stop talking," he said desperately. "Or this is going to be over very quickly."

She opened her eyes, a slow revelation of the galaxy of silver flecks in the irises. "I don't mind if it's fast." Her voice was strained, and as she began to rise and fall over him, he realized that she was just as wildly aroused as he was. Perhaps more, if the way she was whimpering on every down-stroke was any indication.

 _Note to self,_ he thought dazedly. _She really likes deep penetration._

Her nipples were right in his face, cruelly teasing him as she shifted up and down, so he took one in his mouth. They were marvelous nipples, light pink and puffy, crowning two slight handfuls of creamy breast. He recalled, again, his desire to see if they'd fit into champagne coupes. He sucked, then bit lightly, on each in turn, and her whimpering turned to outright cries, which was good, because Jaime didn't think he could last too much longer. Her body was just too alluring, the clinging slickness around his cock was too tight, and he—

Oh, god, he—

Jaime surged up under Brienne, lifting her entirely off the bed as he came with a strangled outcry. Pressing himself somehow even deeper into her made Brienne actually shout, her arms around his neck to keep herself grounded as they both flew off into space.

It happened again. _Again_. He'd thought it had to be a fluke, coming so hard before, like his life was ending, but no. Jaime sat there, panting, with Brienne draped limply over him, pulsing around him. He drew his knees up, tilting her forward so she was even closer, and wrapped his arms around her.

They clung to each other for a long time. He was quite warm, sandwiched between the upholstered head board and Brienne, but when he felt goosebumps form on her back, he knew it was time to move.

He didn't want to disturb her, though. Sleeping with her in his arms— still buried inside her— sounded like one of the best things ever, so he slid down in the bed until he was flat on his back and she lay on top.

"Gmda mumv. Doovy," she managed to garble against his shoulder, making him laugh.

"No, you don't have to move," he said, pulling the covers over them. "You're not too heavy."

"Zhoor?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Ood."

And it was good, very good. She was asleep in moments, and he shortly after. He woke again when she shifted, disconnecting them, and rolled to her side. He rolled to face her just as she put her arm around him and snuggled closer. There was a faint smile on her lips, and he kissed her softly before reaching to snap off the closest light.

The next time Jaime opened his eyes, it was morning, and warm sunlight was streaming in the window to fall over the bed. Brienne stood in the doorway, the nightshirt once more in place and those splendid thighs almost completely exposed below it. She quirked a smile at him and came forward with a steaming mug in each hand.

"I'm not an expert at making coffee," she said, holding one out to him as he sat up, "but this has to be better than what you had at Waffle House."

"Blessings upon you," he muttered. It was damned good coffee, even if it weren't the gourmet stuff he usually had in the morning, and he complimented her on it.

Sipping, he wondered what he should do or say now. He hadn't woken up with a woman in over ten years. Usually he'd slip away in the night, or the woman would, while he was asleep. He settled for looking around at the bedroom, since he hadn't had a chance to look at it the previous night, being occupied with all the sex.

It was a huge old thing of white-painted iron, another quilt having been used to upholster the head board, and spread with yet a third quilt and a fluffy duvet on top. The sole window had fragile-looking antique lace swathed over to one side, and there was a tall stack of books crawling up the opposite wall almost to the ceiling.

"Your place is amazing," he said. "It feels so comfortable. I don't ever want to leave it."

She blinked at that. _Coming on too strong, stupid,_ he admonished himself.

"You have good taste in decorating," he followed up, lamely, and wished she'd join him in the bed.

"Thanks." But she just stood there, leaning against the door jamb, drinking her coffee, an unreadable expression on her face.

"So," she said at last. "We didn't talk or do anything about protection last night."

Jaime felt like a yawning pit had opened in him. "Oh, shit," he breathed, putting his mug on the side table.

"I'm on the pill, to regulate my periods, since I hadn't ever needed it for birth control before," she said, a touch wry, "and since that was my first time, I know I'm clean. Are you?"

"Yes," he said right away, and got out of the bed. The yawning void vanished. _Danger averted._

It seemed… weird, at that moment, to be naked, so he found his discarded jeans and pulled them on before approaching her. "I'm so sorry. I never— I've never forgotten, like that, before." He slid his arms around her waist, tugged her against him. "You seem to make my IQ drop by half."

"I don't feel all that smart around you, either." She smiled, but it was faint, and instead of returning his embrace she just patted his shoulder with her free hand. "What are your plans for the day? It's almost ten o'clock, should you not get moving on them? I'm sure Tyrion's expecting you eventually."

The void reappeared. Confusion rippled through him, with a touch of alarm, and a cascade of thoughts and realizations tumbled through his head.

 _She_ _'_ _s brushing me off_

 _She doesn_ _'_ _t want anything more than this_

 _She doesn_ _'_ _t feel the same way I do_

 _She didn_ _'_ _t feel it like I did_

 _She wants me gone_

The smooth, urbane mask slipped over his face effortlessly, locking into place easily, from long habit. How many times had he had to pretend nothing was wrong when his father was berating him, or when Father and Cersei were neglecting and then actively persecuting Tyrion? If he'd managed it with them, then doing it with a woman he'd only known two days would be a snap.

"You're right." He took a step back and offered her an easy grin. "Need to find a few Christmas presents for Tyrion and Shae."

He gathered up the rest of his clothes and went in search of his bag.

"If you want some breakfast—" she began, but he shot her another grin, this one cockier than the first.

 _When in doubt, ramp up the arrogance,_ he always said.

He never said that. He was pulling it out of his ass in an attempt to hold himself together in front of her.

"Nah, I'm good. I'll just grab a quick shower and go."

"There's more coffee—" she tried as he passed her en route to the bathroom, but he didn't reply, just shut the door.

Even her bathroom was homey— the ancient claw-foot tub had surely had countless numbers of backsides washed in it, and the sink was made out of an old-timey foot-pedal sewing machine. He turned the water on as hot as he could stand it, scrubbed quickly, dried off, and got dressed in record time.

He emerged to find Brienne stripping the sheets from the bed.

 _Can_ _'_ _t wait to get rid of me,_ he thought with more than a touch of bitterness.

She straightened and looked at him. He went into the main room and found his jacket, pulling it on.

"I didn't—" she began, following behind him.

"I was honored to be your first." And he was, more honored than she'd ever realize.

"I think—"

He flashed her another smile and made his way toward the door. "Thanks for making the drive fun."

He pulled open the door and, on the landing, stepped into his boots. His hand went into his pocket in search of the car keys, and found the knit cap she'd made him wear the previous night.

"Ah, your hat," he said, and thrust it into her hand.

"Keep it," Brienne said, trying to give it back, but he hoisted his bag, shot her _another_ grin, this one fraying at the edges, with him wanting to be gone so badly.

"Merry Christmas," Jaime told her.

He tromped down both flights of stairs. Outside was the stereotypical winter wonderland, smoothly rolling hillocks of unbroken snow glistening in the sunlight, and a clear blue sky overhead. Plows had come through, and some kind soul had not only shoveled the driveway but cleaned the SUV off, as well. He thanked all the gods, grateful beyond belief that he wouldn't have to muck about with the snow before making his escape, and chucked his bag in the back seat.

The car fired up right away without problem, to his relief. He took one last look at the house as he put it into reverse.

Brienne had come down the two flights of stairs and was standing there in the open doorway. She'd pulled on sweatpants under her nightshirt and was hugging her waist against the cold. Her brow was creased. She looked unhappy.

 _She_ _'_ _s a nice person,_ he thought. _She felt bad giving me the bum_ _'_ _s rush._

Then he thought, _Felt bad about it, but still did it._

Jaime engaged the four-wheel-drive, and pulled out into the street.


	11. some of it is just really dumb

**Brienne**

Brienne watched as Jaime fled from her, and felt like eight kinds of shit. She deserved it, too. She'd been clumsy that morning, having no experience in how to behave after a 'hook-up', as the kids were calling it these days.

But she'd gotten scared. _Really_ scared, because he'd slotted into her life as if he'd been custom-measured. The chemistry between them had been instantaneous, and strong, and that just didn't happen to Brienne. And definitely not with men who looked like Jaime.

It wasn't even his looks she liked best about him; that was the insidious thing. He was gorgeous, yes, but there was so much more to him than that. She had no defenses against his sort of person. No, against _him_ , with his humor and charm and disarming honesty in talking about his attraction for her. She'd careened into his arms like a falling redwood.

Then she'd woken that morning, sore in places she hadn't realized could _get_ sore, and saw him sleeping there, all tumbled golden hair and bronzed skin over rippling muscles and the best ass the gods had ever granted a human being, and panicked. She could scarcely believe she'd had sex with him all night, let alone manage to formulate a plan for how to proceed now that she had.

Their little adventure had lulled them both into an artificial sense of intimacy, but now it was over, and there was no way he'd want anything more than a momentary diversion with her.

The worst part of it was that she wouldn't even really mind being his convenient temporary girlfriend for the next week, knowing he'd go back to Manhattan and his glamorous life as a rich, powerful businessman. It would have been an amazing ten days. Glorious. The best she would ever have, even.

No, the problem was that she had, at that point, no doubt that when he left, he'd take her heart with him. She was already more than halfway in love with him, after only two days. Give him ten? There'd be nothing left of her. Nothing at all. And she'd have to drag that nothing around with her for the rest of her life.

But she'd hurt him. Despite his easy words, she'd seen him in those bare few seconds before he'd rallied and plastered the first of several rakish, empty smiles over his face. He'd flinched as if she had slapped him.

Brienne just kept standing there in the open doorway, long after he was gone. Her feet were freezing, her coffee, neglected in its mug in her hand, was cold. She wished she'd known a better way of going about it. She wished she'd had the strength to resist him. She wished she'd never met him at all, and then cursed at herself for being a liar, because meeting him was one of the luckiest things that had ever happened to her.

With a sigh, she turned to go back upstairs and shower, then mope around, but found her friend, Margaery, standing behind her, watching her with curiosity.

Margaery was an alto in the orchestra's chorus. She lived on the second floor of the house, which was owned by her grandmother, a scary old matron currently retired to Georgia but making frequent visits to New Hampshire to terrorize her descendants. Margaery's brother, Willas, lived on the first floor of the Queen Anne. Their brother, Loras, had lived in the attic until moving out to shack up with his boyfriend, Renly, and since Brienne had needed a place to live, they'd offered it to her.

"Hi, Marg," Brienne said with a wan smile, and made to go up the stairs, but Margaery nimbly moved to block her.

"If you think you're going to escape without telling me what happened last night… no. You are not." Margaery took Brienne's elbow and steered her into Willas' apartment. The man himself was sitting on the sofa, laptop on the coffee table, as he tapped away.

Willas was a professor at nearby Saint Baelor University, and when he wasn't correcting exams, he was writing articles for publication in professional journals. Margaery was always barging into his part of the house uninvited, so his reaction to seeing her haul in Brienne was unsurprised, if not exactly delighted.

"Yes?" he said, peering over the rim of his glasses.

"We have to interrogate Brienne about the hottie she had in her apartment last night." Margaery sat beside him on the sofa and motioned for Brienne to take the overstuffed wing chair opposite.

"We… do?" Willas glanced longingly at his laptop.

"Marg, I'm not really in the mood—" Brienne tried, even as she sank into the chair as directed.

"You were in the mood to wake me up with your carrying-on," Margaery snipped. _"_ _Twice_."

That perked Willas up. "Is that right? Twice?"

Brienne dropped her head into her hands, wishing she could fall through the floor. "I'm sorry we woke you up."

"I'm not. It was about time." Margaery tsked. "It's not natural, being celibate." She eyeballed her brother, including him in her sweeping criticism. "You get all backed up. It's unhealthy."

Willas and Brienne shared a commiserating glance. Margaery was relentless in her quest to matchmake for the people in her life. She'd even tried to pair _them_ up, insisting they'd be lovely together, seemingly forgetting the fact that Willas was as gay as a spring parade and Brienne, while as tall and strong as a man, was not _actually_ a man.

"How about you let us manage our own health care," Willas suggested, "and you just concentrate on… whatever you get up to, in your witch's lair on the second floor."

"If I did that, you'd both die all by yourselves, and get eaten by your twelve cats." She nodded, looking very satisfied with herself. "At least now I can relax, knowing that Brienne might die alone, but not as a virgin." She flashed a dirty grin. "So, how was it?"

Brienne sighed. "It was amazing. He's basically perfect, and I got scared and ran him off. I think it upset him. I am a bad person and feel bad about myself."

"We all get scared," Willas told her, his face sympathetic. "You're not a bad person."

"Just an awkward one," added Margaery, trying (and failing) to be helpful. "If he really likes you, you can apologize to him and he'll forgive you and then you can date him and fall in love and get married and have babies I can play with."

"Have your own babies," Brienne groaned.

"And ruin my figure?" Margaery looked horrified. "I don't do two hours of Pilates a day so I can get stretch marks and saggy boobs."

"How have you coped with her your entire life?" Brienne asked Willas, poker-faced.

"I had no choice," he replied, sounding resigned. "Hope springs eternal that she finds some sucker to marry and moves away, or gets another job and moves away, or runs off to join the circus and moves away."

Margaery pouted. "Just for that, the next time I bring a man home, I'll make so much noise I'll keep both of you up all night."

"Note to self: get earplugs," muttered Willas, and went back to crouching over his laptop.

Brienne took that as her cue to leave, and stood. "Will I see you at Tyrion's tomorrow?"

Their conductor hosted an open-house Christmas dinner for everyone in the orchestra, and it was usually attended by those who had nowhere else to go, lacking either families or being so far from them that they'd have otherwise been alone for the holiday.

"Nan is up from Georgia, so we're obligated to going to Dad's for brunch, but afterward, I might swing by. Maybe drag this one, too." Margaery leaned over and nudged her brother with her shoulder. "That new baritone looked like a real possibility—"

Willas sighed. "I told you, Marg, he's not gay. And he has the crazy eyes. I do not date any man with crazy eyes. You know this. And his are the craziest I've ever seen."

Brienne escaped while the siblings were arguing, but felt no relief at being back upstairs again. Everywhere she looked, she was reminded of Jaime, which was insane since he'd only been there about twelve hours, most of them unconscious (or having sex with her). But in the kitchen: how he'd spooned her while they looked out the window at the snow. In the living room: how he'd posed, naked, unashamed of his nudity. In the music alcove: how he'd stared while she played.

In the bedroom: how he'd made love to her, twice, and how each time had been more incredible than she'd thought possible.

To her horror, she teared up.

"Dammit," she whispered, scrubbing at her stupid eyes with her fists, like a child.

She finished remaking the bed, piling the linens and Jaime's damp towel in the washing machine. She rinsed out their mugs. She tidied the throw pillows, watered the plants, dusted her instruments. She gave herself a pedicure. Showered. Threw together the barbecue she planned on bringing to Tyrion's potluck the next day. Decided which kind of sonker she'd make tomorrow, to bring as her contribution to dessert.

That just left the other ten hours of the day to get through.

She decided to check her email. There were the usual forwards from her father, of hokey puns and various seafood-related recipes. Renly and Loras had invited her to their New Year's Eve party, complete with obligatory color scheme, fortunately in blue and silver, two colors that actually flattered her complexion.

Then there were the typical orchestra-wide messages. Davos had sent around an email detailing the opportunity to volunteer at a soup kitchen that evening. Sansa told everyone about a local church giving a 'bless the pets' service, that even farm animals were welcome, and how excited she was in case people brought geese and pigs and maybe even a cow or horse or two.

There were several admonitions from Tyrion to all his musicians about the merits of temperance during the holiday season— hypocritical, Brienne felt, in view of how hammered he got on the regular— for the sake of preserving their artistic standards. Or, in other words, "drunks sound like shit" as Tyrion helpfully summarized at the end of the email.

Brienne dutifully plowed through them all. When she was done, instead of shutting the laptop, she opened a new tab and typed "Jaime Lannister" into the search bar, hating herself but unable to stop at the same time.

Dozens of results appeared: articles, blog posts, photos. Brienne was amused, but unsurprised, to find a few fan pages about him, mostly by thirsty-sounding people swooning over all the things she herself found sexy: the nose, the hair, the jaw, _dat ass_ as one fan termed it while providing ten photos of that very body part.

Brienne learned that not only did _dat ass_ look fine in jeans, but also in trousers, board shorts, and the sort of linen clamdiggers that only very wealthy white men could get away with. She recalled the way _dat ass_ had felt in her hands as she'd pulled him deeper inside her, and felt a bit breathless.

The newspaper articles were somewhat less flattering, painting a contradicting picture of either a shark-like businessman doing a fine job of picking up the reins of his deceased father's company as well as dabbling in the stock market, or a louche slacker of a playboy who cared for nothing besides enjoying the fruits of his father's hard labors and was determined to piss it all away on wine, women, and song.

One rather socialist-seeming article seemed angry that he wasn't donating 100% of his earnings to charity, instead having the audacity to live in a luxury high-rise and wearing $3,000 suits. But then the next capitalist-leaning article praised him for donating as much as he did, commenting that it was more than most other presidents of privately-owned companies, and certain to bring about the demise of the free-market economy as they knew it.

There were quite a few blog posts lamenting the loss of his hand, and how it rendered him impossibly flawed despite all the money and god-like looks. Having two hands was apparently a hard-line deal-breaker for many women, it seemed. Brienne, who'd seen the man in question without a stitch on, knew that the hand was almost a mere incidental when compared to all the other many, many wonderful parts of his body.

There wasn't much about him, as a person. No indication of his cleverness, his sense of humor, his easy generosity, his capacity for sweetness, or his appreciation for Xena, Warrior Princess and her thighs. Brienne thought about all the women squealing over his appearance and money, and how they didn't know him at all, and pitied them.

Then she pitied herself, for being so inept and driving him away. She'd had the opportunity of a lifetime— to spend a week, or more, having fun and sex with an amazing catch of a man, and she'd blown it.

 _Blown it._ That made her remember how she'd used her mouth on him, which made heat flood her veins, and she put her head down on her desk with a thump. God, he was sexy. And funny. And interesting. And even cute, at times.

She thumped her head again. Just like her, to develop a crush on someone she'd known exactly two days. And who now likely hated her for being awful to him. How was she going to get through tomorrow? He'd be at Tyrion's. She'd have to sit there, across a table from him, and choke down food while trying not to stare at him, pretending they barely knew each other and hadn't spent two fantastic days together.

Shutting off her computer, she decided to sublimate her emotions the way she always did, and played her cello for hours, tragic and melancholic pieces that drove down her mood even further, until her stomach growled and she remembered she hadn't eaten at all yet that day. Dinner was an apathetic tuna sandwich, eaten listlessly and washed down with cheap rosé while watching reruns of M*A*S*H.

"At least I still have you, Hawkeye," she murmured drunkenly, and flopped sideways on the butt-sucking couch.

The next morning, she had a crick in her neck and her mouth tasted like something had died in it. She hastened to brush her teeth, then assembled the sonker, and finally trudged to her closet to figure out what to wear. She labored over choosing the perfect outfit, which of course had _nothing_ to do with how Jaime was going to be there and she wanted to be as not-ugly as possible.

 _Liar_ , she told herself.

He seemed appreciative of her legs, so… another sweater-over-tights combination? She pulled out a forest-green tunic, saw it matched her blue-and-green plaid leggings, and decided that would do. Her shoulder-length hair was still curly from yesterday's shower, and she decided that would do, as well. Makeup? She did try to make an effort for special occasions, and if Christmas did not qualify, what did?

So she used a bit of eyeshadow in soft shades of fawn and taupe, then eyeliner and mascara in a chocolate-brown that didn't overwhelm her pale coloring. Festive red lipstick from the lone tube she owned, and she was done, with no other excuses to procrastinate.

Brienne packed up the big aluminum trays of barbecue and cranberry sonker into a basket, swathed herself in a winter-white pashmina, and stomped down the stairs in her riding boots. Loras and Renly had been by early yesterday morning to shovel and clear all their cars, since Willas had a slight disability from an old injury and Margaery declared herself above such menial tasks. Brienne was just glad they counted her as family enough to clear off her car, as well, and had even done Jaime's rental, to his clear relief when he'd left.

She clenched her jaw against the flood of apprehension that crashed over her and pulled her Outback onto the road, headed across town to Tyrion's and Shae's home.


	12. but I love when you sing it to me

Author's Note: Thank you, everyone, for your reviews! I'm so happy you're enjoying the story :)

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* * *

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 **Jaime**

After leaving Brienne, Jaime passed one of the worst days of his life, apart from when he'd lost his hand. Tyrion was happy to see him— or as happy as Tyrion got— and Shae near-smothered him with hugs and kisses when he arrived, only to hug and kiss him more when she saw how downtrodden he looked.

"For god's sake, Jaime, you probably scared the shit out of the poor thing," Tyrion told him after nagging his brother into revealing why he was sloping around the place in misery. "I told you she was shy. That was my diplomatic way of saying she was a terrified virgin and you should stay away from her. But do you listen?"

"He does not listen," said Shae helpfully, Tyrion's own personal Greek chorus. "He never listens."

"Go fuck yourselves," Jaime grumbled, slouching in his seat, arms crossed.

"Okay," Tyrion agreed. "Go away for a few hours. Shae and I will go fuck ourselves. And each other. Don't come back until I text you that it's safe."

Jaime left in haste, not wanting to be around for that particular serenade through the bedroom walls. He drove the rented SUV through the streets of downtown Manchester until he found a store that was still open, even on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

It turned out to be some frou-frou gift shop. He milled around, acquiring things he thought there was at least a small chance of Tyrion or Shae liking, like a sterling-silver cigar guillotine and a copper bowl for whipping meringue. Apparently, one was _only_ allowed to use the bowl to make meringue. Nothing else. The label was very clear about that. He wondered what sort of law enforcement was attached to such a purchase. He hoped Tyrion and Shae liked meringue.

There were a few baby-related items, like a teething ring you could freeze, and a 'bring-baby-home-from-the-hospital' suitcase containing everything even the most discerning newborn might require for such a momentous journey. Jaime bought them all. His future niece or nephew would be the first not parented by his mad sister and her bloated sot of a husband, so he was excited to see how screwed up his other sibling could make a child.

He was satisfied with the damage he'd inflicted upon his Infinity card when, approaching the cashier, his attention fell upon a set of absolutely beautiful champagne coupes. Whisper-thin, with delicate etchings of vines twining around, they had that silvery hue that only leaded crystal could boast. Wondering what the hell he was doing, he told the sales clerk, "I'll take these, too."

The damned things were Lalique, and vintage, too, the clerk happily informed him. _Good thing I_ _'_ _m rich,_ he thought while the clerk wrapped each glass with the precise care typically only afforded to live grenades. He hadn't really intended to spend so much, the coupes pushing the tab from 'just somewhat expensive' to _'_ _way_ too fucking expensive'.

He still bought them.

He was the saddest, stupidest man he knew.

The clerk offered to gift-wrap everything for the low, low price of twenty dollars per gift. Jaime squinted at her, trying to decide if it were really that costly to tape some paper around a box, or if she just saw him for the easy mark he was, but in the end just shrugged and let it happen. The holidays came but once a year, etc. etc.

Tyrion did not text to indicate the coast was clear, but upon Jaime's return to his brother's house, he found them both vertical and fully clothed, to his immense relief. Shae co-opted him to help her in the kitchen, and he followed her machine-gun-fire Spanish-accented English instructions as best he could. She only gave him tasks he could easily perform with the one hand, like stirring the contents of pots or using the mixer, reminding him again why he was so lucky to have her for a sister-in-law. Besides Brienne, she was the only one who seemed to ever take his disability into consideration.

When she handed over a bowl of egg whites and told him to whip them into meringue, he couldn't keep from smiling, possibly his first of the day.

"What's that smile for?" she asked, whisking around the kitchen in a blur, unhampered by the five months of baby she was toting around.

"I love you," he told her over the whir of the mixer thrashing the hell out of the egg whites.

She frowned, staring at him in concern. Then she went to the door and called to Tyrion, "Titi, your brother is dying."

 _Titi?_ he wondered. _Dear god._ Shae was beautiful, and fun, and nice, but… _Titi_?

Tyrion came into the kitchen and gave him a good thorough going-over.

"Hm," he said at last, "apart from the hangdog expression, he looks fine. Why do you think he's dying?"

"He told me he loves me. And since this is your family, where people only admit they like each other on their deathbeds…" Shae shrugged.

"Sometimes not even then," Tyrion commented, and Jaime knew he was thinking of their father, whose last words had been "Try not to fuck anything else up". He tilted his head to the side, studying Jaime with all his considerable intellect. Jaime felt as if a laser had been trained upon him.

His brother apparently felt Jaime had already suffered enough, because he shrugged. "Maybe he's just got an incurable but not-fatal disease," he said, and went back to concocting the mess he was calling 'eggnog', which seemed to consist primarily of a malevolent Polish vodka made from, if the smell were any indication, paint thinner.

Jaime was aware of them watching him the rest of the day, with varying degrees of concern and suspicion. He himself veered from sullen boredom to martyred self-pity, unable to keep from thinking about Brienne and what he might have done wrong to alienate her. He'd joked that he could be lazy in bed, but… _had_ he been lazy? Done a bad job? Disappointed her so grievously that she'd hurry him out the door the next morning? He'd never had any complaints before, though he would admit he never really stuck around long enough to hear any that might be expressed.

He went to bed the moment the clock struck ten, relieved to have an excuse to leave Tyrion and Shae to cuddle on the sectional while he slouched in the wing chair by himself. He fell asleep right away, and for the first time in years, didn't wake up before morning came, not even once.

The next morning, Shae was all a-flutter to put the finishing touches on the food, clean the house, and get dressed, all at the same time.

"Shae, my dulcet darling," said Tyrion in the deep tone Jaime recognized when his brother was attempting to calm a skittish horse, or Cersei, "the house is fine. The food is fine. You look, as always, miraculous. Nymph-like. Ethereal."

"Isn't everyone bringing food, too?" Jaime wanted to know. "I thought this was supposed to be a pot luck."

Shae turned furious eyes to him, and Tyrion rolled his, sighing at the foolishness of questioning a woman on her choices of hospitality. Jaime backed away, hand and wrist up in surrender, and scampered away in relief when the doorbell rang and he could escape his sister-in-law's wrath to go answer it.

A merry group stood on the doorstep, chatting brightly and laughing as he opened the door, and almost bowled him over in their haste to enter. Things got loud and confusing from there, with more people arriving every few minutes, until the house was bursting at the seams.

Rendered unusually self-conscious by how everyone was staring at him in curiosity, Jaime took to hiding in the kitchen and serving as Shae's footman when she sent him out to set the dining table, and then as her scullery maid when she told him to join her and a half-dozen others in putting on the meal's final touches.

And then a cry rose up from the masses in the living room: "Brienne is here!"

"Hi, everyone," she replied, a smile in her voice, and Jaime's stomach turned to lead. He'd known she was expected to be there, but knowing it and having it actually happen were two different things.

"Tell me you brought your barbecue," Shae demanded as she poked her head out of the kitchen door. "If not, you can turn around and go right home."

"Fuck the barbecue," came Tyrion's voice from somewhere. "I want to know if she brought the pineapple upside-down cake."

"Sorry, Tyrion," Brienne replied, laughing, "this year it's the sonker."

 _What the hell is sonker?_ Jaime wondered, and concentrated on stirring the pot in front of him as directed. This gravy would have lumps in it over his dead body, he decided.

"Give me, give me," commanded Shae, making grabby hands. "The faster I get the barbecue in my stomach, the faster this baby will stop kicking me in the spleen."

And then Brienne was entering the kitchen, saying, "Wow, it looks like there's twice as much food as last year—"

She stopped short, and Jaime knew it was because of him. He turned to face her, feeling the weird sensation of dread and eagerness in equal measures. Brienne's magnificent height had her towering over everyone else, and cold had made roses bloom on her cheeks. Her hair was a pale gold tumble to her shoulders, and the makeup she wore made her look exotic to him, mysterious, alluring.

Well, _more_ alluring. He already thought her the sexiest woman he'd ever met.

She wore another baggy sweater over leggings, but even the blue-and-green plaid could not disguise the supple length and elastic tone of her thighs. Jaime recalled how they'd felt around his waist, and his head, and sighed.

"Hi, Brienne."

She stared at him the way she had when he'd told her about his father: like she'd sell _her_ soul if it could buy _his_ back.

Just when he thought she wouldn't respond, she murmured, "Hi, Jaime."

Just the sound of her saying his name made the muscles of his stomach clench. Not knowing what else to do, he went back to stirring the damned gravy which, he saw in annoyance, had clumped up due to his inattention.

Brienne fled the kitchen, because of him, Jaime was sure. He just kept stirring. One of the guys in the kitchen with him, a short guy with weirdly pale eyes, slunk out after her. Jaime kept stirring. After a few minutes, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tall flash of blue and green stride past the kitchen toward the bedrooms. Seized by impulse, and the need to say… something, anything, to her once last time, he handed the spoon to Shae and followed.

Brienne was in Tyrion's bedroom, a white blanket thing wrapped around her shoulders, purse in one hand and the other on the knob of the French door leading to the back yard, clearly about to affect a cunning escape. It made him feel impossibly sad.

"Brienne," he said tiredly, "you don't have to leave because of me. I don't want you to miss your holiday with your friends. I can go."

She stared at him, eyes wide and startled. "I— I wasn't actually leaving because of you. Ramsey was being a pain. I'm not in the mood for him, today." Her smile was a limp and bedraggled thing. "I don't think I'm very good company in general, today."

He was having trouble looking at her; everything about her reminded him of how badly he'd fucked things up.

"I'm not, either," he muttered.

"Jaime, I'm sorry for… how I was, yesterday," she blurted. "I didn't mean to make you feel…" She flailed her hands around, unable to put words to her thoughts.

"Used? Discarded? Stupid, for thinking we had more of a connection than you did?" he suggested, and clenched his molars, not having meant to reveal that much.

She grimaced. "Yes. All of those things. I didn't mean for that to happen. I… don't like knowing that I hurt you. I didn't use you. I'd _never_ discard you. And you're not stupid. I felt the connection, too. I mean, I feel it. It's not just you."

"Then why…?"

"You scared me."

 _What?_

"With how much I wanted and liked you," she hastened to say, and then paused. "How much I want and like you. Present tense. Not past. I haven't ever had a relationship with a man before, of any sort, besides friendship. I have no idea what I'm doing. I messed it up, and hurt you, and I'm so sorry."

She stared down at the carpet, and to Jaime's dismay, she looked about five seconds from bursting into tears. He went to her, moving swiftly, and lifted her chin, her skin smooth against his fingertips.

"It's fine," he said. Relief coursed through him like warm water over chilled flesh. "I was worried I'd done something to upset you. Or said something to make you change your mind, to turn you off."

The little laugh she gave was disbelieving. "I sincerely doubt you could do anything to turn me off."

He managed a smirk, and locked his knees to counter how relief had weakened them. "That sounds dangerously close to a challenge."

"It is _not_ a challenge. I forbid you to do gross things just to see if you can manage it." She sounded very stern and he couldn't keep from grinning idiotically.

"You forbid it, huh?" He plucked her her purse from her hand and chucked it onto the bed. "Another blanket thing? You must have a thousand of them."

"Only a dozen or so," she snipped. "And for the last time, Jaime, it's a pashm—"

He probably should have kept his lips to himself, but he was really enjoying this new loosening of his self-control, and kissed her. She kissed him right back, no hesitation, no shyness. He stripped off her blanket thing, touched her, held her close, and did everything he could to remind her why she had ever liked him in the first place.

Then someone coughed, and Brienne jerked away. The nice older guy from the chorus was there with yet more coats to be deposited.

"Sorry," Davos said gruffly, tossing the coats onto the growing pile on the bed, eyes averted as if he'd just stumbled upon them having sex on top of all the wraps instead of just kissing beside them. "I'll just—"

He left, in a hurry. They started laughing.

Jaime took one look at Brienne, and laughed harder, because her red lipstick had smeared all over her chin from their kisses. She started to giggle at him in return.

"Look," he said, pulling her into the en suite bathroom, and pointing at the mirror. They both looked ridiculous.

"Shae must have some makeup remover in here," Brienne said between giggles, and began rooting around in the drawers for something to get the lipstick off.

Jaime tried to distract her by pressing himself against her back and kissing her neck, causing goosebumps to rise on her warm, soft nape.

"Jaime," she sighed, "I feel you should be made aware that I am not going to have sex with you in your brother's bathroom."

"For which his brother is most grateful and relieved," said the aforementioned brother from the doorway. His keen eyes flicked over them, missing nothing. "You've made up. Good. I was getting tired of his moping around the house all day."

Jaime glared at Tyrion, embarrassed at having Brienne hear he'd been pining for her.

"I was moping, too," she said softly, and he turned back to her.

They stared at each other, Jaime feeling as relieved as Brienne looked, and gravitated toward each other until their lips met once more.

"Dear god," muttered Tyrion, whom they had completely forgotten was present. "I can only hope I wasn't this besotted when I met Shae."

"You were," Shae said from behind him, sounding pretty damned smug about it. "As you should be." She took him by the collar and tugged him backwards, trying to get him to follow her from the room. "Makeup remover is in the medicine cabinet. Blue bottle. Cotton balls in the top drawer," she mentioned as they left.

A few swipes with dampened cotton later, then a quick rinse with water, and they no longer looked like demented clowns.

Jaime pulled her against him, trapping her against the bathroom sink. "Let's hide in here until it's time to eat. Then grab plates of food and come back. Then escape out the back, go to your place, and…" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"I'll think about it," she said, laughing, and pulled him along behind her, returning to the party.


	13. you can sing me anything

**Jaime**

The rest of the day passed in a blur of food and noise and music and way, way too much eggnog. Brienne and he sat, squashed together at a corner of the dining table, while the rest of the merrymakers shouted and argued and burst into song at odd times.

Instead of having to resign himself to only mashed potatoes and various mystery casseroles, Jaime was able to eat everything, because Brienne heaped a plate with food, cut it into bite-sized pieces, and handed it to him before doing the same for herself, all while maintaining a constant stream of conversation with everyone else.

He was aware of Tyrion's speculative gaze as the meal went on, but felt immersed in such a fog of relief that he ignored his brother, and everyone else except Brienne. She explained to him that her barbecue was the type made in the eastern part of North Carolina, and that it was vastly superior to the other, ketchup-based kinds, which she dismissed with a haughty sniff.

He learned that sonker was a type of cobbler, an official recipe of which apparently no one could agree upon, but which Brienne insisted was best made with pie crust on the sides and top (but not on the bottom— "Gets soggy," she declared) and pats of butter on the lid of dough covering it. It was one of the best-tasting things he'd ever had in his mouth, though when he told her that, he made sure to give her prolonged eye contact so she understood what _specifically_ held the number-one position for that title.

She gave a shocked giggle and turned away, but then her hand began sliding up his thigh. He just beamed stupidly down at his half-full (half-empty?) plate and continued to demolish its contents.

The party started winding down when it got dark, everyone wanting to make it home before the streets iced over too badly. Brienne wanted to stay and help them clean, but Shae, knowing of her nervousness about winter driving, shooed her away.

Jaime, however, was given no free pass, so he just walked her to her car. They stared at each other in frustrated longing while she fiddled with her car keys.

"I'll see you again soon," he said. "Tomorrow. The day after. Every day until I have to go back to New York."

The light in her eyes dimmed, just a little, at the mention of his need to return home, but she smiled at him, both her hands clasping his and swinging them a little between them. He stepped close and kissed her, sinking into it like always, feeling that hazy glow of pleasure that always sparked to life between them.

And then she was driving away, and he was jogging back to the house to get his blood moving and warm him up. Once inside, he got to cleaning up everything as best he could, even though carrying in dirty dishes from the dining room was a lengthy process, having to go one at a time as he did.

He loaded the dishwasher, wiped down the table, even passed the vacuum over the floor, and hummed to himself the entire time. Finally he looked around, and found there was nothing left to do.

"Oh," he said. The dining room looked like a showplace, the kitchen was spotless, and Tyrion and Shae were watching him with the wary caution of do-gooders approaching a feral cat.

"So, it's not all that late," Tyrion said with no subtlety whatsoever. "Perhaps you'd like to go spend some more time with Brienne."

Jaime looked at his watch. It was barely eight o'clock. "You think she wouldn't mind?"

Shae gave him a little smile. "The way she was looking at you… no, she will not mind."

He kissed her cheek on his way past her to get his jacket and car keys. He was almost out the door before he remembered something, and snagged the largest box from the pile of gifts under the tree.

"You got her a present even though you thought it was over?" Tyrion asked, leaning in the doorway.

Jaime paused. "You think I'm stupid, don't you?"

Tyrion shook his head. "Hasty, perhaps. But you've never been one to think things through." He glanced down at where Jaime's wrist terminated abruptly. "But it worked out well for me, the last time. Maybe it will work out well for you, this time."

Jaime flashed him a grin, and left.

There were lights switched on in all three stories of the Queen Anne when he arrived. Getting out of the SUV, he craned his neck so he could look at the attic, and saw a very tall silhouette pass in front of the window. He couldn't keep from smiling again, and jogged to the front door. A press on the doorbell, and he bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited.

He heard the patter of feet coming down stairs, but these were dainty feet, connected to an equally dainty body, and a lovely face framed by warm brown hair.

"Yes?" the young woman asked when she cracked the door, her eyes taking in every inch of him with minute examination. He had the feeling of being inspected for freshness, as if he were a tomato she was considering purchasing.

"I'm here for— I'd like to see Brienne, please," he said, with what he hoped was a suave grin.

"You must be Mr. Basically Perfect, then." Her eyes traveled in a leisurely fashion over him once more. "So what did she do, around three in the morning, that made you shout so loud?"

 _Well_. That was more bold than even he was used to with the New York socialite crowd, never known for their restraint in the best of times. Jaime just stared at her.

"It's just that I could use a move like that in my own repertoire," she added pertly. "Nothing like making a man yell as if he's being murdered."

"For god's sake, Marg," said a male voice, and Jaime saw the door to the first floor apartment had opened to reveal a young man who bore a striking resemblance to the terrifying girl in the foyer. The man grabbed her arm and tugged her into his place so Jaime could enter the house. "You know where Brienne is," he continued, gesturing with his head toward the stairs. "I'd hurry. Don't know how long I can hold this one back."

Jaime decided to heed his sage warning and dashed up the steps, feeling lighter the closer he got to Brienne's door. When he knocked on it, she slid open the door, saying, "Marg, did— oh."

She'd washed off her makeup already, and looked clean and shiny and wonderful.

"Hi," he said, unable to stop the smile from spreading across his face.

"Hi," she replied, smiling back. Then she looked down. "Did you— is that a Christmas present? For me?" She seemed to deflate a little. "I didn't get you anything."

"It's more of a present for both of us, really."

"Is that right," she said, smirking, her tone wry as she stepped back to let him in.

Jaime toed off his boots and dropped a kiss on her mouth, just as he'd promised her to do each time he walked past her. He set the box on the dining table and then felt her hands at his collar. She peeled his jacket off his shoulders and down his arms.

"Thanks," he said, then held out his arms. "Anything else you want to take off me?"

She froze in the middle of hanging his jacket on one of the coat rack pegs, but then smiled in a dirty way that had his blood itching.

"As a matter of fact…" she drawled, eyeing him much the same way the girl downstairs had, though this time it was far more enjoyable. She began a slow stroll around him, studying him every side, her gaze almost scorching him with its heat.

When she was behind him, she grasped a handful of his shirt at his waist and began tugging. He happily lifted his arms so it could be drawn off, and stood there, skin prickling, knowing she was staring at him. Then she pressed her mouth to his shoulder, giving him an open-mouthed kiss, darting her tongue out to taste him. Jaime sucked in a breath and prayed for the fortitude to survive, if she were planning on a slow seduction.

Brienne trailed kisses all over his shoulders, his back, his neck, all the while moving her hands over him. At one point, she sank her teeth lightly into the muscle rounding his shoulder, and his knees almost buckled.

"Brienne," he said, shocked at how hoarse his own voice sounded, how needy.

She pressed herself up against his back, twining her arms around his waist, and he sucked in a breath to feel her bare breasts against him— she'd removed her sweater and, if his suspicions were correct, everything else, as well.

"Hmm?" she hummed against his shoulder blade. Her hands slid down his belly to the button of his jeans, and she began to open and unzip themwith agonizing slowness.

"You're killing me," he managed to say. "I'm dying, here."

She pushed his jeans down his hips with his boxer-briefs and wrapped one hand around his erection.

"You don't feel very dead to me," she murmured in his ear, just before taking his earlobe in her teeth and tugging.

She moved around to face him, and he kissed her with all the desperation he felt, but she evaded his embrace so they only touched at the mouth, all the while stroking his cock with loose-curled fingers that gave him only the barest feather-light caress.

Jaime groaned, prepared to beg if that would make her touch him harder. He was ready to fling her to the ground and slam himself into her, but he kept just enough of a thread of control to hold still and let her do what she wanted.

What she wanted, apparently, was to make him lose his mind, because before he knew it, she was kissing down his chest and pushing his jeans to his ankles. Kneeling between his feet, she looked up at him, her mouth parted and her eyes wide and dark as the night sky.

"Brienne," he whispered, tangling his fingers in her hair, not pulling her closer, just waiting.

She closed her lips around the crown of his shaft, sucking lightly, and his hips jumped in reaction. She took him in deeper, stroking her tongue against the underside of him, and then he felt her hands on his balls. Warm, soft, they cupped and rolled and squeezed, and Jaime felt like the top of his head was going to come off.

Then she took all of him down, and he almost lost control, clawing it back by the barest margin.

"Stop, stop, stop," he panted, and she let him slip from her mouth.

"Wasn't it good?"

"Good?" he wheezed. "Yes, it was good. But I need to touch you, too." He pulled her to her feet, marveling at the sight of all that smooth, pale skin as she unfolded to her full height. He ran his hand over her shoulder, down her throat, past her breasts to her belly, then around her side to her back. "Even if I had both hands, I couldn't touch you enough."

She slid into his arms, pressing herself all along his body and holding him close. His cock was rigid between them, but the embrace didn't feel sexual. At all. Jaime swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat.

"Come on, then," Brienne said after a moment, and shimmied free of his arms to take his hand and pull him after her into the bedroom. He kicked out of his jeans and socks and followed her, the Pied Piper of his libido.

It was dark, there, just like last time, but tonight was clear and bright, and moonlight streamed into the window, falling across the bed in a big silvery rectangle. Brienne stretched herself over it, and Jaime's mouth _watered_. She was like a buffet of gourmet delicacies, all of them for him. She opened her arms to him, and with a groan, he knelt on the bed, and then lowered himself over her.

She sighed, almost sounding relieved, as their bodies touched from shoulder to ankle. Her skin was cool against his; he felt like he was on fire for her. He leaned on his elbow so he could slide his hand down her belly again, this time slipping his hand between her legs. Jaime hissed when her moisture drenched his fingers.

"God, Brienne, you're soaked," he groaned. He ran the pad of his thumb over the pearl of her sex, standing rigid, and found her opening, plunging two fingers deep inside.

"You… ah… don't know… how sexy you are," she gasped, panting between the words. Her legs fell open, those long white thighs parting eagerly for him. "I get so turned on just looking at you. Touching you… _sucking_ you…" Her hips rolled, and her secret inner muscles flexed around his fingers. "I think… I could come… just sucking you."

Arousal surged through Jaime. He couldn't wait any longer. He withdrew his fingers and licked them clean while she watched in fascination, her breath coming in short puffs.

"Jaime," she moaned. "Jaime, Jaime."

He rolled on top of her, fitted the head of his shaft into the notch of her body, and rammed forward.

"Ohgodyes!" she shouted, arching under him and tilting her pelvis so he somehow, magically, slid another inch deeper.

He'd worried, a little, about being too rough with her, but… she loved it. _He_ loved it. He fucked her hard, so that her breasts jounced from the force of his thrusts, and it felt good, so good, so much better than anyone else ever had. She planted her feet flat on the bed and used her strong legs to buck up, meeting him halfway, and with her hands on his ass, pulled him deeper. Jaime knew he'd never been further inside a woman, that no one had ever taken him so completely within herself like this.

"Ah! Jaime!" she cried out, and then she was writhing under him. Knowing he'd brought her so powerfully, that she was reacting so fiercely to him, affected him even more than how exquisite she felt around him. He hurtled over the sweet, sharp edge into climax, his breath sobbing in his lungs as he struggled to draw in air while pleasure battered at him.

"Brienne," he panted into her ear, over and over, reeling and dizzy.

He thought he fell asleep, or maybe just passed out, but he came to, suddenly, by a jostle to his shoulder and a giggle in his ear, charmingly girlish, especially in such a monumental woman.

"Roll over," she was telling him, and he numbly obeyed, letting her do most of the work with a good shove that sent him to his side next to her.

"What are you smiling at?" she asked teasingly, rolling to her own side so she could face him.

"Was I smiling?" He hadn't even realized it.

"Yes, this big smile, with your eyes closed." She traced a fingertip along his cheek, by his mouth. "You have a dimple here. Just one. Every time you smile, I want to kiss it."

"I hereby give you permission to do just that," he said grandly, and then yawned.

"You're tired."

"I just worked very hard."

"And did a good job, too."

"I aim to please."

"Oh, you did."

That had him opening his eyes again. Brienne had propped her cheek on her fist and was watching him, a curious little smile curling her lips.

"Stop staring at me, wench," he mumbled.

"Can't help it," she replied. "Your nose is fantastic. Makes me want to admire it for hours."

"Remind me to tell you the secret of my nose another time. When I'm less sleepy."

"Your nose has a secret?"

"A very important one. Sleeeeeeeepy now."

"Tell me! I need to know this… very important nasal mystery."

"Zzzzzzzzzzz," Jaime said, doing a terrible imitation of snoring.

Brienne tsked at being thwarted. "Well, at least get under the covers, then."

He shifted just enough to yank down the quilt before flopping under it on his belly. Brienne soon joined him, pressing close to him on her side, one arm around him, and then rested her head on his shoulder blade. Her breath was soft on his skin, and he could actually feel when she fell asleep.

 _This is bliss,_ he thought. _Right here. This._


	14. the book of love is boring

**Jaime**

When Jaime woke a few hours later, it was to find himself curled closely around Brienne, her bottom fitted snugly against his groin, and he experienced the near-instant erection he hadn't enjoyed since his high school years. Sliding his hand around her hip, between her legs, he stroked her, feeling the slickness of their mingled release still there, until she hummed and shifted and pressed back against him.

"Jaime…" she said, sounding sleepy and amused. "Again? Really?"

"You sound reluctant, wench," he murmured in her ear, kissing her cheek. "I must have been pretty terrible, last time. Let me make it up to you."

She laughed, eyes still closed, and Jaime's chest felt tight with emotion at how happy and free she looked in that moment. "I guess the least I can do is give you a second chance to impress me."

"That's big of you." He moved his hand down her thigh, then lifted it so he could prop it on his own. She kindly assisted and reached down to position the swollen head of his shaft where it needed to be, and slowly, slowly, he pressed into her.

Brienne sighed, sounding relieved. Jaime knew how she felt; something heavy lifted from him, too, when he was inside her. He began a gentle thrusting, his hand over her mound, loving the feel of it cupped over the springy curls and how his middle finger could slip just between the folds to brush lightly, so lightly, over the center of her pleasure.

He rocked into her for what seemed like an hour, building so gradually toward climax that when he came, it was almost a surprise, a silent shudder against Brienne, his face buried against her neck. Her orgasm was equally subdued, just a faint hitch in her breath as she trembled in his arms.

A thousand words rose to his lips; cocky words, humorous words, flattering words. _Loving_ words, but it was probably too soon for those, and none of the rest felt right for the moment, so he just held her until she fell asleep again, and sank into the darkness right after.

Jaime woke the next morning to the mellow sweetness of Brienne's cello in the main room of the apartment. The air throbbed with the notes as they unwound from her fingers, but sounded a little peculiar, simplistic, and he sat up in bed, just listening and wondering what he was listening to, until she stopped playing a few minutes later.

He got out of bed, intent on using the bathroom, and she started up again. This time it was similar, somehow, but also… different. Higher octave, this time? _You_ _'_ _re quite good at figuring this out,_ he mocked himself, padding to the toilet. He decided on a quick shower, and when he came out, she was playing what seemed like a third version of the music.

In her room, a wooden chair held a stack of clothes— sweatpants, t-shirt, socks— that he assumed she'd left for him, so he pulled them on and went into the main part of the flat just as she finished that piece. She was sitting in the little alcove formed by the roof gable that she used to play music, at a machine that looked like an elaborate music mixer of some sort.

"What are you playing?" he asked. "It sounds strange."

She smiled. "Last night… the sex we had, in the middle of the night… it reminded me of certain piece, and I wanted to play it for you. But it calls for four parts, so I'm playing each part separately. I've got one more to go. When they're all done, I'll combine them and you can hear the harmony."

"That sounds like a lot of work. You could have found it on Youtube?" he suggested.

"Well, yes, but…" she glanced down, her cheeks pinkening a little, before glancing back up at him. "I wanted you to hear _me_ playing it. A sort of Christmas present, since I didn't get you anything."

A stray ray of sunlight caught her eyes when she looked up at him at just that angle, making the flecks in them turn gold instead of the silver he was used to, and his breath caught.

"Okay," he made himself say, though he wanted to grab her up and kiss her. God, she was beautiful to him. "Should I make us some breakfast?"

"Sure. Eggs and toast? I made coffee already."

"I can do eggs and toast." Maybe. Hopefully. He'd manage. He padded off to the kitchen, and she began to play again. While he cracked eggs, it occurred to him that the music was starting to sound familiar in how it started so slow and quiet. He poured the eggs into the hot skillet and put bread in the toaster, feeling a faint itch in his brain as familiarity tugged at him. The music's long, sweeping notes lulled him into almost not noticing that they were gradually rising in pitch, if not in volume.

The toast was just done when she stopped for the last time.

"Perfect timing," he called across the apartment to her. "You can butter the toast."

She joined him, deftly spread half a heart attack's worth of butter over the toast, and they carried their plates to the table.

"Let's listen to it while we eat," she suggested, her face avid. She was excited for him to hear what she'd done. He nodded, and she hit a button on the mixer console before joining him at the table.

Immediately his ears were filled with a harmony so pure and sweet that he froze, mouth open and toast halfway to it. His eyes flew to Brienne's; she was watching him with an expression that was… knowing, he supposed, aware that what she'd played was lovely and that he would like the sound of it, but it was also eager.

She wanted him to _love_ what she'd created, as much as she did. When the notes wove and swooped around each other, so gentle and coaxing, she must have seen something in his face, something that told her he did love it, because she smiled, and then ate a forkful of eggs.

"You should eat, too," she whispered, not wanting talk over the music. "It'll get cold."

He tried, he honestly did, but he'd get as far as putting a bite in his mouth and then a harmony would thrum just right and he'd forget to chew. Or he'd chew and forget to eat more. This time, when he heard it start to wind up, the tempo picking up the tiniest bit, the pitch rising with exquisite slowness, he just put down his fork and resigned himself to a cold breakfast when this was all over.

The notes soared, higher and higher, until with a piercing trill, they peaked, lifting him into the sky so that he could almost feel a cool mist on his face, and then… stopped. The sudden silence was shocking, and he thought he could hear his own heartbeat in it. Then the music started again, as low as it had been when it began a few minutes, or an hour, or a day, ago. Gently, he was eased back down, and he felt like he was drifting, on waves, or maybe clouds.

With a last endless note, the piece faded away to nothing, and left him sitting there, feeling… full. In his heart, if not his stomach, which grumbled in protest at forgetting his meal.

He realized he'd closed his eyes, somewhere along the way. He opened them to find Brienne watching him, a mysterious little Mona Lisa smile on her lips.

"What the hell _was_ that?" he whispered, almost feeling like to speak loudly after that would shatter the spell that had fallen over him.

"Adagio for Strings," she replied, her own voice low. "A lot of people think it sounds like death. I used to, even. But now…" Her gaze flickered over his face. "Now, all I think it sounds like is making love. With you."

His breath froze in his chest. A flash of fear went through him, because there was no way in hell he'd be able to compare to the art she had just given him. If she thought that much of him, and then— inevitably— he let her down… the idea made his stomach clench in apprehension.

But then he thought, _I am a Lannister. We don_ _'_ _t deserve half of what we have, but we enjoy it, anyway._ He'd just have to do the best he could, to be good enough for her, so she never became disappointed in him.

"You don't have to say anything," she continued. "I know how it can be. Sometimes, it's just so beautiful you have nothing to say."

Grateful, he smiled at her.

"You want me to nuke your plate?" she asked, nodding down at his congealed eggs and cold toast.

"No," he said, and his voice broke. He took a hasty sip of coffee. "No, thanks," he tried again, and this time it sounded like actual human speech. "They're fine like this."

In a daze, he shoveled eggs into his mouth, lost in thought. What could he do to top that? Nothing. Nothing could top that. But he could give her the insanely expensive champagne coupes he'd bought yesterday in a fit of self-pity. When his plate was clean, he gulped the last of his coffee and went right to the box he'd brought with him.

"So…" he began, not really knowing how to proceed.

Brienne turned from putting the dirty dishes in the sink and saw what he was holding. "When did you get that?" she asked. "Everything must have been closed yesterday."

"It was." He stared down at the box. "I got it the day before."

"You bought me something after I screwed everything up and was horrible?"

Jaime forced a shrug. "I saw it, and it reminded me of you, and I thought… well, if I don't give it to her, I can bring it home and… torture myself by looking at it, I guess."

She looked guilt-stricken, so he kissed her. "It's over. Forget it." He nodded toward the box. "How about you open the box and see what's in it?"

" _Can_ I?" Brienne looked down at it, then up again, excited and eager as a child, making him smile.

"Well, the wrapping _is_ nice, so I guess if you want to just look at that, you can, but the gift is on the inside…"

She elbowed him in the side and sat right on the floor with the box in her lap. "I almost never get presents," she told him as she began to pull at the festive paper and bow. "No one in the orchestra can afford to give them to anyone but family— well, except for Marg, she's loaded— and I tell Dad not to get me anything, it's too much work for him to go shopping and wrap things— Jaime! What…?"

While speaking, she'd opened the box and pulled out one of the coupes, and another, and another, until all eight were free of their packaging. She unwound the tissue paper from each and set them around her on the floor in a semi-circle, staring at the way they threw prisms and sparks all around the room.

She lifted huge, surprised eyes to him. "Champagne glasses, Jaime? And—" She upended one, squinting at the base, and then gasped at what she saw. " _Jaime_. These are— are too much. How much did they cost?"

"I am not going to tell you how much they cost," he informed her. "Just… if you ever get really mad at me, please don't smash them, okay? That's all I'm going to say about that."

Brienne pinched the coupe's stem between her forefinger and thumb and twirled it in the sunlight streaming in the window. Rainbows shot around the room. "Jaime, seriously, this is way too much."

"Nah." He leaning and kissed her cheek. "It's nothing compared to what you gave me."

She stared at him a long moment before nodding slowly. Then she grinned and leaped to her feet. "I don't have any champagne, but I do have something in a box that might work."

"God help me," Jaime muttered, standing and collecting the coupes, placing them on the dining table while she went to her refrigerator for said box of wine. He joined her in the kitchen and peered at the label. " 'Rosé muscatel, one of the finest wines of Idaho'," he read aloud, then gave Brienne a wide-eyed look of dismay. "Surely you're joking, Ms. Tarth."

"You're being snobby again," she told him while washing out two of the coupes.

"Can't help it," he protested. "It's a congenital Lannister family disease."

She tsked at him, drying the glasses, then handed him one, and poured a measure of the wine into each.

"What should we toast to?" Brienne asked. "How did these remind you of me, anyway?"

"Your boobs," Jaime said easily, smiling when her mouth dropped open in shock. "I've been wondering for a while, now, if they could fit into this sort of champagne glass." His gaze dropped to her chest, covered only by a thin layer of worn cotton. As he watched, her nipples stiffened and pushed against the fabric. He gave a happy sigh. "I've given the matter considerable thought, and I've come to the conclusion that they will. I've also been thinking about pouring champagne over your boobs, and licking it off."

He took a sip of the muscatel and flinched. "But it will have to be actual champagne, because this cat piss is the stuff of nightmares, my dear."

"Pompous bastard," she muttered, snatching the coupe from his hand and dumping its contents (and her own) down the sink before shoving the box back in the fridge. Then she whipped off her t-shirt and marched to the dining table. Taking up two more of the glasses, she placed them over her breasts and turned to model them for him.

"Well?" she asked.

Jaime examined them closely. They were a perfect fit; the creamy globes of her breasts swelled just enough to fill the bowl of the coupe without overflowing, while her nipples pointed in exactly the right way to conform to the dip inside the bowl, above the stem.

"I knew it," he said, very pleased with himself, and raised his arms over his head in victory. "All hail the master."

Brienne took an exaggerated look around. "Uh, I'm the only one here, and I'm not hailing you."

"Sure you can," he said. She shook her head. "C'mon, one little hail." She shook her head again. " 'Yay, Jaime, you magnificent stud!' That's all that's needed."

"Oh my god, you crazy man, I am not saying that." She removed the glasses but didn't replace her t-shirt, instead grabbing its neck and hem in her hands and using the soft fabric to loop around his neck, drawing him in for a kiss.

"Just a single, tiny little hail…" he persisted, even as he put his hand and wrist on her waist and pulled her closer.

"Nope," she said against his mouth, and kissed him.


	15. it was written very long ago

**Brienne**

Thus commenced the best ten days of Brienne's life. Jaime gave up any pretense of staying with Tyrion and just brought all of his things over to her place. Mornings, she spent either doing what he termed "musical stuff", or teaching a self-defense class at a local gym downtown. He insisted on attending all the classes, and participating, thoroughly distracting all her students because they couldn't stop staring at him.

She couldn't blame them; she could barely stop staring at him. He would wear jogging shorts with a sleeveless t-shirt, revealing long, thickly-muscled, bronzed limbs. Sometimes his shirt would ride up, exposing his ridged belly, or even his chest. The shorts often rode low, and slanting abdominal grooves would be revealed… that's when the classes would dissolve into anarchy and she'd have to dismiss the women until next time.

Jaime went to every single performance of the orchestra, not only to Tyrion's surprise, but Brienne's.

"Don't you get bored of the same thing three nights in a row?" she asked him.

"Do you?" he shot back, grinning, knowing perfectly well she didn't.

Brienne found herself playing for him, to him, each night, knowing he was out there, hearing it all. After each performance, she'd be asked to join the other musicians to grab dinner or a few drinks, but then she'd make eye contact with Jaime as he made his way backstage. That glint would invariably be in his eye, the glint that said "wait until I get you alone, wench," and she'd be refusing their kind offers before he'd even reached her.

Her fellow musicians were fascinated by her whatever-it-was with Jaime, since they were a bunch of huge gossips and loved nothing more than sticking their noses into the business of other people. Some of them, such as Ramsey, were vocally baffled why he would have anything to do with her romantically, but the best of them— the truly nice ones, like Davos and Sansa and Margaery, were happy for her. Sansa was so happy, in fact, that she cried, which made Brienne intensely uncomfortable.

…Jaime quickly alleviated that discomfort, however, with a lengthy necking session in her car, followed by going down on her for an hour once they were home, until she'd come four times and screamed herself hoarse and he'd given himself a cramp in the jaw.

"Worth it," he insisted, even as he tried to massage some feeling back into his cheek muscles.

By the time the day of Renly and Loras' New Year's Eve party arrived, Brienne had come to the terrifying realization that she was in love with Jaime. Deeply, desperately, irrevocably in love with him. Worse, she suspected he was in love with her. They had not discussed anything about what they would do when January second came around and it was time for him to return to New York City. The idea of watching him leave, of having to spend her days without him, after being by his side non-stop for over a week, sent pain lancing through her heart.

The night of the party was gorgeous; it had snowed earlier that day, leaving a fresh layer of clean white flakes over the slushy, discolored ones from a few days earlier. The night sky was clear and cloudless, with a perfect view of the waxing moon and its gauzy halo of moon dog from the downtown loft apartment where Loras and Renly lived.

Jaime had had to go shopping for clothes that would fit the color theme the men wanted for their party; Brienne helped him find a navy suit, gray shirt, and striped silk tie that made him look so good, she wanted to rip it right off him again. He'd wanted to buy her something, but that hadn't felt right to her. And she couldn't afford anything new on her own, so she fell back upon one of the few evening gowns she had, for whenever she was called upon to do a solo and couldn't just wear her usual black trousers and shirt to blend in with the rest of the strings.

It was a shimmering sapphire-blue damask, heavy and satiny, long-sleeved and with a plunging neckline. It managed to minimize the breadth of her shoulders and fool the eye into thinking she had some cleavage. The skirt wasn't too full, and there was a cunning slit that came all the way up her thigh that she could zip closed, to be more modest, or unzip for the full effect. She planned on unzipping it to its fullest, and purposefully kept Jaime from seeing her in it until the last moment, wanting to surprise him.

As it was, she had to fend him off as she showered, put on makeup, and did her hair. He objected when she got flats out of the closet.

"That dress was made for heels. Don't you have any?" he asked, rummaging through her things until he found a pair of strappy silver sandals that she'd gotten from a boutique for cross-dressers and drag queens, the only other people with feet her size who wanted pretty shoes.

Come to think of it, that's where she had gotten the gown, too.

"I'd be way too tall in those," she protested. "I'd tower over you. It would look ridiculous."

"Nah," he said easily, that gleam in his eye returning yet again. "These are the type of shoes Xena would wear with her toga. I bet she could stomp a god in these."

"We have to do something about your pop culture fixations," she murmured, secretly thrilled that he didn't feel weird about being seen with a woman taller than he. And she was going to be a lot taller, with the heels on: six-foot-six, in fact, boosting her height bonus over him by another three inches.

Just as she had predicted, the gown practically made hearts appear in Jaime's eyes, to go along with the usual horny glint, and they barely made it out of the apartment on time. Brienne had to reapply her lipstick while he cleaned her previous application off his own lips. He swept a silvery pashmina over her shoulders, laughed to see the orange Wellington boots she stepped into for the trip over, and swung her sandals from his fingers as they went downstairs to her car.

"Just so you know," she said as she drove them there, "I used to have a crush on Renly. Before I met Loras and realized they were a couple. Loras likes to tease me about it, sometimes."

"Why?"

Because he can be spiteful, Brienne thought. Because he likes to flaunt what he has in front of someone who'll never have anything approaching it.

But she just shrugged. "I think he finds it funny that I was… barking up the wrong tree."

"As long as you're barking up the right one now," he said easily, and reached out to take her hand. He liked when she drove, so he could hold her hand, and again she marveled at how comfortable he was in his masculinity, with himself as a man. She could have endured being with a man who had hang-ups in that way, but Jaime lacking them just proved to her how perfect he was.

Well, not perfect. He had his flaws. His quicksilver mood-changes could take her by surprise, and his caustic sarcasm often grated on her nerves when it was directed toward her. He tended to forget about everything else when he wanted sex. He and Tyrion could get into horrifying arguments, which could be set off by absolutely nothing. His deprecating comments about his sister and deceased father made her uncomfortable.

And he absolutely refused to tell her about how he lost his hand. Tyrion was mum about it, too, when she asked why he was so secretive about it.

"That's his story to tell," was all her conductor would say, to her frustration.

Once they arrived, Jaime tried to snog her in the elevator. She evaded his lips to avoid another lipstick smear, but he just put them to her throat and when the elevator door opened, it was to reveal to a half-dozen party-goers his hand grabbing her butt while he buried his nose in her cleavage (such as it was).

Brienne went bright pink and held her head up high while sweeping past them, ignoring their giggles and whispers. Jaime just grinned like the rogue he was, and followed her into the loft. She paused at the door to hand over their wraps to the coat-check attendant and exchange the Wellies for her shoes, her new height giving her an even better view of the event, and in they went.

The place was decorated in Renly's and Loras' exquisite maximalist taste, with way too many fairy lights and silver streamers stretching from one end of the tall ceiling to the other. Brienne had to admit that the color scheme made the affair look impossibly elegant.

Jaime perused all the guests, then turned to Brienne, and said, "You're the best-looking woman here."

It was a patent falsehood, since both Margaery and Sansa were present. Marg wore a silver minidress of ruched taffeta that looked as if it had been sewed onto her abundant curves, to the ardent appreciation of a half-dozen men vying for her elusive attention. Sansa wore what amounted to a girl-sized sausage casing with a flared hem from knee to ankle, in cerulean silk that matched her eyes and contrasted with her hair, and made her basically look like a mermaid had wandered onto land to grace the party with her presence.

Brienne just smiled and said, "You're the best-looking man here," but in her case, she was telling the truth. Loras and Renly were both handsome men, as were various of their guests, but Jaime outshone them like the sun put shame to the stars.

"It's the nose," he said dismissively. "I'm not half as handsome without it."

"I'm sure that's right," Brienne murmured. "Noseless men are generally not considered very appealing."

He just laughed, and when the sound drew some attention, she laughed to see the reactions of those who looked Jaime's way, their double-takes at his extraordinary good looks amusing. Her own distinctive laughter alerted Sansa's keen ears to their arrival, and she poked at the young man at her side— her cousin, Jon— to bring her over to them.

Jaime gave Sansa a kiss on the cheek in greeting, and Brienne introduced him to Jon. She bent a little to let Jon kiss her own cheek, as well, unable to keep from grinning at the narrow glance Jaime gave the younger man.

"I'm glad you're here!" Sansa exclaimed. "You look wonderful!"

Brienne rolled her eyes. "Funny."

"Wench, you need to learn to take a compliment," Jaime complained.

Jon gave a little cough. "No, that's blind humor," he said, "or at least Sansa's attempt at it. She thinks she's great at it, but she's really not."

He sidled away to avoid the smack his cousin aimed at him, grinning.

Jaime's mouth rounded in an O. "Ah, that's right." He shifted, uncomfortable. "I forgot. Sorry."

"I'm not!" said Sansa, clearly delighted. "Thank you! I love when people forget I can't see. That's how I know they think of me as a person instead of my disability."

They all stood there, staring at each other, for a few seconds.

"And there's my other specialty," said Sansa. "Causing awkward silences."

"Every party needs at least one," Jaime said, and they all smiled. "Don't forget, I have a disability of my own, and I also like when people forget about it."

"Ah, that's right, your hand! I did forget about it!" Sansa beamed in his direction, which was off by a few degrees, but Jaime didn't seem to mind. "Jaime, would you dance with me?" she asked him. "All the other men are terrified they'll break me, besides Jon, and I'd like to dance with someone I'm not related to, for once."

"It would be my pleasure," he replied smoothly. "What are we doing? Paso doble? Foxtrot? Rumba? Please say rumba. I haven't had a good rumba in a long time."

"That sounds like something you need to complain to Brienne about," Sansa giggled, making him laugh as he led her onto the dance floor.

That left Brienne and Jon.

"Would you like to…?" he asked her, gesturing to where the couples were swirling around on the parquet in what was a loose interpretation of a waltz, rather than anything more elaborate.

"Sure," she replied. He was a pleasant partner, seemingly unbothered by the nine-inch height difference between them, and they easily kept up a stream of chatter for the entire dance, mostly about his burgeoning career as an architect and how he'd just been commissioned to renovate and expand the music hall.

"So I'll need to work closely with Tyrion and the rest of you to make sure I get the acoustics right," he was saying as the music ended. They stopped and Brienne looked around for Jaime, only to spin when he tapped her shoulder from behind.

He grinned at her, then turned to Sansa. "Thank you for the dance."

"No, thank you! Jon's nice to humor me, but after a lifetime together, we bore each other stupid."

"Not quite stupid," Jon said with a smile. "Maybe just slightly dim."

They excused themselves to go attack the buffet, and Brienne and Jaime slid into each other's arms as if they had practiced it.

"That was nice of you," she murmured.

He shot her an amused frown. "As if dancing with the second-most-beautiful woman at the party is a hardship?"

Jaime reached down and gave her butt a quick squeeze, making her eeep and jump a little, before returning his hand to its normal upright position.

"She's a good dancer, and a good person," he said more seriously. "It's crazy how men get turned off by the blindness. Apparently her brother, Robb, and Jon take turns escorting her to things like this. They seem like a nice family."

He seemed wistful about that, so to cheer him up, Brienne gave his butt a quick squeeze.

Jaime eeped and jerked in shock, making Brienne laugh, so loudly it had heads turning all around them.

"I was not expecting that," he said, starting to laugh, himself. "Not protesting— please feel to do it whenever you like— but I was not expecting it."

The music started up again, and he swept her into his arms. Her self-consciousness to be even taller faded as they swayed back and forth, staring into each other's eyes like smitten fools, and every once in a while leaning in to exchange a soft kiss.

Brienne was pretty sure she was having the best night of her life, and wondered it it might just be possible to make it a reoccurring type of thing. She didn't want to spoil the mood, but… she would like to know where they stood, what they were doing with each other. What would happen when he left on January second?

So when Jaime pressed their cheeks together and dragged his hand up her back to press her closer, she whispered in his ear, "What will we do when you leave?"

He pulled back to look at her, a bit startled. "Do?"

She nodded. "Do. What's next? Once you're back in New York?" Brienne dropped her gaze to the knot of his tie. "I went into this— us— knowing that it could end when you left," she told his tie. "So if that's all you had intended, I wanted you to know that I wouldn't fight it or make a problem for you."

When he didn't answer, she looked up from his tie and found him watching her, his face very serious.

"Is that what you want?" he asked, in that tone he got when he was trying to suppress an emotional reaction. Brienne loved that she knew him well enough, at this point, to perceive that 'tell' in his behavior.

"No," she replied, very softly. "That's not at all what I want."

Relief flooded his features, and he have her a hard, fast— but thorough— kiss.

"I think if you'd said yes, I'd have cried," he told her, and rested his head on her shoulder for a moment.

"No crying," she murmured, pressing a kiss to his temple and not even caring if it left lipstick behind. "Crying is not allowed."


	16. it's full of flowers

**Brienne**

They were so wrapped up in each other that they were surprised when the countdown to the new year began, had they been. At zero, and the cries of _Happy New Year,_ Jaime planted a voluptuous kiss on Brienne that almost made her swoon, with tongues sliding sinuously and lips caressing and clinging.

"Damn," said a voice to the side when they finally drew apart. "I was about to turn the hose on you two."

Brienne blushed a little find Renly and Loras standing there, watching them in avid interest.

"Is this the gorgeous elder Lannister brother Marg has been yapping about for a week?" Loras asked, his eyes bright from the champagne.

"Brienne, you've been holding out on us," Renly said, leaning forward to exchange a greeting kiss with her. "Hi, Jaime. This is Loras."

Brienne lifted her eyebrows. "You two know each other?"

"My brother married his sister," Renly explained, then smirked. "Poor woman."

Jaime gave a snort of laughter. "I think Robert's the one you should pity."

Brienne and Loras exchanged amused glances.

"Stuck in the middle with you," he said lightly to her before saying to Jaime and Renly. "In _our_ families, people actually like each other."

"That's because _your_ families are relatively free of assholes," said Renly. "Not everyone lucked into that sweet situation. Check your privilege."

Jaime reached out his prosthesis, which he'd decided to wear for the night, to shake with Loras.

"You even got your hand to match the color scheme," Renly said, glancing down at the aluminum hand. "That's commitment."

"When I do something, I go all the way," Jaime replied, grinning. Brienne heard Loras' minute catch of breath, and didn't blame him one bit: Jaime in full 'charm mode' was a sight to behold.

"You'll have to share your secret with me," Loras murmured to her.

"I think Renly might object to you using my… sensual wiles… to pick up new men," she murmured back, fully aware the other two men could overhear them.

"What he doesn't know…" whispered Loras.

"He's right here and can hear every word, you shameless hussy," Renly commented, smirking. Loras just leered back at him, making Brienne laugh.

"Here comes one of the rare Tyrell family assholes now," Loras murmured, then grunted when Brienne's elbow met his sternum. "Marg! You stopped tormenting your hopeful suitors to come talk to us."

"I wanted to see if Sansa had delivered to Jaime the obligatory 'if you hurt Brienne, we'll beat you to death with a shovel' speech. Pretty sure she didn't."

"Well, no," Jaime admitted, "but she did mention how _disappointed_ she would be, and I think Sansa's disappointment might hurt worse than a shovel-beating."

"Marg!" Brienne exclaimed. "It's very… well, it's psychotic, but sweet, that you are worried about me, but… no shovels."

"How about a spade? I bet I could whack him pretty good with just a spade."

"No garden tools of any sort," said Brienne, very sternly. "This is a ridiculous conversation. Why don't you go make Jon dance with you? I bet he'd like the chance to dance with someone he doesn't share DNA with."

"And he won't grab my ass, either," Margaery said, perking up. She fixed Jaime with a gimlet eye before spinning on the heel of her satin pump and going to inform Jon he was her next partner.

"Well, she's a terrifying woman," Jaime commented when she was safely out of hearing distance.

"You're telling me," said Loras with a laugh. He and Renly excused themselves to mingle, Loras' hand finding Renly's ass for a fond pat as they walked away.

"Interesting pair," said Jaime, his own hand wandering dangerously low before Brienne redirected it back above her waist.

"I'm sure they think the same of us," she replied, amused. "About Marg… she's an interesting case. Only girl, three brothers, overbearing grandmother… she's fiercely loyal and protective of her friends, but when it comes to taking care of herself… "

"Sounds like someone else I know," Jaime said, gazing up at her with what even Brienne had to admit was a infatuated expression. "How much longer do we have to stay? Can we go home so I can make love to you now?"

"Thought you'd never ask," she said with a grin.

He grinned back. "Meet you at the coat-check girl. There's something I want to get, first."

Brienne fetched her Wellies and pashmina and Jaime's coat, switching out of the sandals with a sigh of relief for her poor feet, and swathed herself in the soft cashmere just as he returned with two miniature bottles of Veuve Cliquot.

"We keep forgetting to get something we can christen your new glasses with," he said. "And this is even decent stuff. Your pals have good taste."

Once back at her apartment, they wasted no time shedding their clothes, heedlessly discarding Jaime's new suit and Brienne's gown on the floor as they made their way to the bedroom. He was on and _in_ her almost before her back hit the mattress, thrusting in such a sinuous, luscious way that she let out a heartfelt groan.

"We forgot… the champagne… again," he said between kisses, pulling her knee up so her leg wrapped around his waist.

"What champagne?" she gasped back, grabbing his butt and making him groan.

It didn't last long; it didn't need to. Soon, they were coming, and lights flashed so powerfully behind Brienne's closed eyelids that she cried out, over and over, her voice echoing off the ceiling rafters.

When she returned to herself and opened her eyes, it was to find Jaime staring down at her.

"What?" she said, a bit sheepishly. "Was I too loud? Did I scream in your ear? I couldn't help it. It was too good."

"Not too loud, no," he murmured.

Apprehension was a faint chill over her skin. "Did I say something strange? What did I say?"

That made his lips quirk. "You don't remember?"

"I didn't even realize I said actual words," she admitted. "Just thought I was howling out one big vowel movement."

His grin came and went in a moment. "No," he said slowly, "you definitely said actual words."

"Well, what was it?" Brienne was starting to get weirded out.

"That you love me," he said softly, dropping his forehead to her shoulder, hiding his face from her. "You said that you love me."

Shock rippled through her, followed quickly by alarm— men hated being told that women loved them, didn't they? It made them feel obligated, tied down… right?

But this was _Jaime_. Nothing he'd ever done or said had hinted that he'd react that way. From the very beginning, he'd seemed as open-hearted with her as she'd ended up being with him.

So Brienne decided to be brave, for once in her life. She was going to reveal herself first, take a chance, let herself be vulnerable. If he didn't like hearing it, she'd… just have to deal with it. Or maybe hang herself from the shower curtain rod. Whichever.

Taking a careful breath, she said, "Well, I _do_ love you, so..."

Jaime went suddenly, shockingly lax against her, and she perceived for the first time how tensely he'd been holding himself. Braced for rejection, she realized, and felt like she was melting.

Faintly, so faintly, he breathed into her ear, "I love you, too. So much. From the moment I saw you."

She didn't know what to say. She didn't have the words to express the storm of emotions that swamped her. She doubted words existed in the English language, or any other. Relief, gladness, exultation, and _love, love, love_.

She never thought it would happen for her. She'd thought that if she ever married, it would be because she had settled for whomever would have her. That she'd taken scraps just to keep from being alone, and maybe have some children, one day. She had never, ever suspected that a man might come to love her even a little, let alone as much as Jaime seemed to, if the way he trembled in her arms was any indication.

He rolled, surprising her, so that he was on his back and she on top of him.

"My beautiful wench," he murmured, gazing up at her with eyes that were dreamy, almost unfocused. He looked gorgeous, stretched out below her like that, all golden hair and skin and emerald eyes.

"If I'm a wench, what are you?" she asked, shifting up and down, just a little, so she could rub her center over his groin. He'd softened and slipped from her, but was swiftly gaining new interest as she slid against him.

"Hm, who'd have a wench?" he asked thoughtfully, his eyes soft. "A pirate, don't you think?"

"You can get a hook instead of the prosthesis," she said, taking a chance on joking about his lost hand. They'd been in such a rush to get to the sex that he'd forgotten to take it off.

"I… actually kind of like that idea. I'd win every Halloween costume contest ever," he said, laughing up at her, looking happy and light and free.

 _I made him that way,_ Brienne thought with fierce pride. _I gave that to him._

"I love you," he sighed as she shifted and took him deep.

"Love you, too." She moved, arching and rolling her hips, until his now-hard shaft slid inside her.

He closed his eyes in bliss. "Love you _more_."

"Not— not possible," Brienne gasped, his upward thrusts making her breath stutter.

There was a chance that this was a mistake, that it wouldn't work out. That they'd be left with heartache instead of joy. But, as she edged ever closer to climax, she knew it was worth the risk. _Jaime_ was worth the risk. For the opportunity to have him in her life, he was worth anything.

She came, then, moaning his name, and this time was not only aware she was telling him she loved him, but doing it on purpose.

And he said it right back.

.

* * *

.

 **Jaime**

 _It_ _'_ _s stupid to feel so bleak,_ Jaime told himself as Brienne drove him to the airport. He had only known her for two weeks— not even that, just twelve days- and yet somehow she'd twined herself so thoroughly into his mind and heart that he scarcely had any idea how to go on without her.

"It's just for four days," he said to her, feigning casual acceptance when inside all of him was balking at the idea of leaving her cozy attic to return to his mausoleum of a high-rise in Manhattan. "I'll be back for the weekend."

"We'll talk every night on the phone," Brienne agreed. "And email. And text, too."

"Jesus Christ," Tyrion grumbled from the back seat, where he and Shae were sitting, all of them going along to the airport to see Jaime off. "You two are acting like he's going off to war for a year."

Shae elbowed him. "We were the same way. Be quiet."

"We weren't that bad," he grumbled.

"Shae, don't leave me," she said, deepening her voice and speaking in flawlessly unaccented American English. "Shae, I'll _die_ without you."

"Titi, you are my world," Tyrion shot back, his voice high-pitched and Spanish-flavored. "Titi, I can't _breathe_ without you."

They looked at each other and began cracking up. Jaime and Brienne exchanged an amused glance from the front seat.

"Don't leave me here with them," she stage-whispered.

"I'll bring back some nice strong orderlies to take care of them," he whispered back. "They'll be heavily medicated and very happy."

"In a year, you'll have learned to take yourselves less seriously, trust me," Tyrion said.

A year? Would they still be together by then? Jaime watched Brienne for her reaction. She was driving, so her eyes were on the road, but her pale lashes fluttered, and he wondered what she was thinking.

There were no difficulties with his flight, this time, and in short order he had his boarding pass and had to leave them behind at the gate entrance.

"I'll text you when I get on the plane, and when we land," he told Brienne. "And again when I get home."

"Okay," she said quietly. "Be careful."

"Always." He cupped her cheek and kissed her, a trembling whisper of a touch before pulling her into one last embrace.

"I love you," he murmured into her ear.

"Love you more," she whispered.

"Not possible." When he pulled back, her eyes were suspiciously bright.

Tyrion sighed, feigning extreme patience, but submitted to a manly handshake before Shae swept Jaime into a perfumed hug.

"Bye-bye, baby," he told his sister-in-law's belly, patting it fondly and grinning at Brienne, who bit her lip and looked closer than ever to crying.

"Oh, wait, here," she said, and began pulling something out of her tote bag: a large, soft, fuzzy square of forest-green cashmere.

"You're giving me my own blanket thing?" he asked, amused.

"They're really good on planes!" she said defensively. "They compress down small, but are warm and really versatile." She paused and blushed. "And it's green, like your eyes, so it will look good on you."

"They _all_ look good on me," he said, wanting to make her laugh, "even that hideous purple one."

She rolled her eyes and gave him a push toward the security gate. "Time to go. Bye."

He grabbed the back of Brienne's head and laid one last kiss on her before stuffing the pashmina— yes, he knew what they were called— into his carry-on. "Love you."

Then he glanced at his brother and Shae. "Oh, yeah, I guess I love you, too."

Now it was Tyrion's turn to roll his eyes. Shae imitated Brienne and pushed his shoulder. He grinned at all three of them, and turned to leave. He went through security without hassle, and stopped one last time to see them all still standing there, watching him. Shae had slipped her arm around Brienne's waist, and was pressing a tissue into her hand. As Brienne dabbed her eyes, Tyrion raised his hand in farewell. Jaime waved back, and turned the corner into the gate.


	17. and heart-shaped boxes

**Jaime**

Contrary to his promise, Jaime did not come back to Manchester that weekend.

Or the next weekend.

Or the next.

Or two more after that.

Brienne had known it would be difficult, being in a lost-distance relationship, but she hadn't expect the strength of the loneliness and yearning she'd feel. Her life had abruptly gone dark after having been lit up with brilliant sunlight, but when she told Margaery that, her friend had just rolled her eyes and pretended to barf into the nearest potted plant. That's when Brienne knew she had to take the dramatics down a notch.

When she spoke with Jaime on the phone, he sounded increasingly tired and distracted, and didn't often have time to text, or went hours before he could respond. He was working very hard to catch up from being away for two weeks, and another new project he was working on. As the weeks passed, and every weekend was another reason he couldn't come back, Brienne became concerned, but when she offered to drive down there to see him and he refused, she became outright worried— why didn't he want her there? She didn't think he was hiding anything, but… what if he were?

Her little apartment felt vast and empty without him, and she found herself finding excuses for not being there whenever possible, accepting invitations by her fellow musicians to go out with them after performances. Usually it was to bars or an all-night café, but once or twice they'd dragged her to a nightclub, and she'd been quite pleased to sublimate her misery in eardrum-shattering dance music while getting tipsy.

Her friends tried to help. Their Friday-night post-performance pub crawls had always really been therapy sessions wherein they tried to help each other have better love lives. All three of them had their set of problems with men; Brienne, obviously, because of her height and lack of looks, Margaery's wealth and beauty tended to attract the fortune hunters and fuckbois just wanting to hook up, and Sansa's blindness always scared away any potential suitors.

One Friday, a month after Jaime had left for New York, seeing how Brienne had been languishing for want of him, the other two women decided an intervention was in order and dragged her to an absolute dive of a place to get her hammered and talk some sense into her.

Unfortunately, they each had very different concepts of what 'sense' entailed.

Sansa was like the good angel on her shoulder, encouraging her to have faith in Jaime and be patient, that everything would work out.

"If you love him, Brienne, you have to trust him," she said in her sweet voice. Her blue eyes were so earnest it was easy to forget, sometimes, that they couldn't see anything.

Margaery, however, was the bad devil on the other shoulder. Quite extremely drunk, and feeling bitter in general after a recent disappointment in love, she began railing about Jaime.

"He's stringing you along, the rat-bastard," she told Brienne and Sansa very intensely, waving her martini for emphasis. "He has no intention of coming back here. You gave in to his smooth-talking— and don't get me wrong, I'm glad you did! If you had to lose your virginity to anyone, Jaime Lannister is the best of all possible options— but he should not have promised to come back when he never actually comes-the-fuck back!"

"He's not a rat-bastard," Brienne protested. "He… he might not come back, but he's not a bad person."

As protests went, it was pretty feeble, because she'd also begun having insidious, treacherous little thoughts along the same lines in the last few weeks. Not necessarily that Jaime was stringing her along to be unkind, but that… well, he wouldn't be the first who got bored with her after only a few days. And what was more likely: that he had fallen head-over-kiester in love with her after only two weeks, or that he had gotten carried away during the holiday season and was now regretting his rash behavior?

"Men are liars who say anything to get what they want," Marg continued, then slurped down the rest of her drink and passed out with her head on the bar's sticky table.

So while Marg was out cold, and Sansa had entered a bit of a drunken trance-world where she swayed in her seat and sang to herself, Brienne sat there and tried to make her alcohol-soaked brain process the jumble of her thoughts and emotions.

She didn't doubt that, for those two magical weeks they'd had together, Jaime had felt warmly about her. Perhaps even thought he loved her. They'd had a bit of a fairytale experience, driving up the coast and secluding themselves cozily while it snowed through the holiday season. An idyllic situation, to be sure, and anyone would be ripe to get carried away by it.

But it had been over five weeks since he had left, and the flame that had burned brightly between them felt like it was waning to a flicker. She hadn't really understood the term 'heartbroken' before, but now… she literally, actually felt like her heart was cracking in two, because while Jaime might have only gotten swept away by the romance of their time together, she had not. She'd been open-eyed and clear-headed going into it, knowing how likely it was for any liaison between them to end.

She had spent much of her time since his departure ruing her foolishness, and how she'd given in to the demands of her heart and groin. She could only claim inexperience, embarrassing at her advanced age of thirty years and two months. She began wishing she'd continued to resist him. She might have been sexually frustrated and dying of curiosity to know what it would have been like to have sex with Jaime, but at least there wouldn't have been this persistent ache of having experienced the bliss of loving him, only to have it snatched away.

When Margaery was conscious again, she started up again as if she'd never stopped, treating Brienne and Sansa to some more grumbled ranting about her newest pet theory.

"The hotter a man is, the more unreliable and dishonest he is," she proclaimed. "Men are douchebags, and Jaime is their king."

Brienne tried to contradict her, but her protests came out weak. Her past was a mottled history of various guys trying to get into Brienne's pants out of curiosity, or because they lost a bet, and how they'd ghosted her once it became clear she wasn't putting out.

As the days passed, and weekend after weekend went by without Jaime's return, memories of past catastrophes began to swamp Brienne, weakening her, finding the exact right chinks in her armor to get past, turning her from a reasonably happy and confident woman to one who was shadow-boxing foes she hadn't seen in almost a decade. The warm glow of confidence that his affections had given her faded. Without being able to see the truth on his face, in his eyes, it felt like the words he sent her in texts, or spoke over the phone, were empty.

She wanted to believe in him, tried to, but every day, in the mirror she saw the same homely face. Every day, she dressed the same unwieldy body. Every day, she navigated the same world she always had, where people stared at her as she walked by, whispering about her height or her ugliness.

She even experienced it in the orchestra, sometimes. Every time a new member joined, there was usually an adjustment period needed where they stared at her, and asked the other musicians about her. Woe betide them if they asked Margaery, who'd give them a tongue-lashing they'd never forget.

They'd end up feeling worse, though, if they asked Sansa, because she'd give the new musician the most loving and reproachful admonition ever, talking about how sad and disappointing it was that some people could be unkind, especially about such a wonderful person. By the end of her gentle lecture, the person was usually feeling like the most terrible human who had ever lived.

Some were made of sterner stuff, however; Ramsey Bolton was one such. Now, he was a rat-bastard. His reaction to seeing her the first time was… satisfied, almost, as if he'd custom-ordered a recipient for his cruelty and there she was, ready for him to torment as he would.

"You're quite something, for someone who's nothing," he'd commented lightly upon meeting her, his mad pale eyes traveling over her with unholy anticipation of what he could inflict upon her.

There was something creepily resilient about him. Brienne's standard operating procedure for bullies was to ignore them, but when she ignored Ramsey, he only grinned, somehow knowing that his barbs were hitting their marks, even if her lack of reaction did not hint at such.

He had loved how Jaime had gone away and never returned.

"Scared another one away, huh?" he murmured on stage one evening as his baritone section passed the strings on their way to take their positions.

"Probably killed himself when he came back to his senses and realized what he'd done," Ramsey whispered another time, during a break in rehearsal.

But most of the time, he'd just stare at Brienne, and giggle, and she knew he was amused at the very idea of her being found attractive and lovable by anyone, let alone a Jaime-level person. She kept reminding herself that what she had with Jaime was real, but with every day that passed, it got harder and harder to believe it.

By the sixth week since Jaime's departure, Brienne was convinced she'd never see him again, and that it was just as well, since there was no future for them and it would just end horribly if it dragged on for any period of time.

Margaery had invited herself up to Brienne's to get ready for the orchestra's performance that evening, so when there was a knock on the door at five o'clock, she shouted "come in!" from the bathroom, where she'd just come out of the shower.

"Be right out!" she called a few moments later, busily toweling her hair, but the bathroom door opened.

"This is taking friendship too far, Marg—" she said from under the towel, but then a cold hand slid around her waist and she shrieked, doing a complicated pirouette while flinching away, and almost fell into the tub.

A hand grabbed her wrist and hauled her upright, then plucked the towel off her head.

"I was hoping I'd find you naked, wench, but not screaming in terror," Jaime said, grinning widely. He tossed the towel into the tub, slid his arm around her, and tugged her close for a deep, searching kiss.

Brienne's heart, still beating like a rabbit's from her surprise, could not quite adapt that quickly from the speedy shift of being terrified to being relieved to being aroused; she pulled away from the kiss and wrapped her arms around him, buried her face against his neck, and burst into tears.

"What's wrong?" Jaime asked softly, his hand stroking down her back, the other arm holding her close. "Did something happen?"

What could she say? How was she supposed to express the million thoughts and fears pinging off the inside of her skull? She had no idea how to talk to him anymore. She hadn't even expected him to show up, not after five weeks of disappointment.

"Nothing," she ended up saying, thought it was not true. She released her death-grip on him, wiping at her eyes with her hands, and leaned back to see his face. "I just… I missed you. I didn't think you'd come."

"Told you I would!" Jaime replied, cheerfully enough, but his smile faded a little.

"You look tired." Brienne tilted her head, studying him. Some cruel twist of fate dictated that even weary and preoccupied, he was fairy-tale levels of gorgeous, the faint lines at the outer corners of his eyes and the deepening of the grooves bracketing his mouth only adding character to the underlying beauty.

"I am. Or I was," Jaime replied. He took her in his arms again and kissed her, and it was just like before he'd left, sweet and loving and perfect. When they pulled away, he held her tightly for a long moment. "Now that I'm here with you, I feel fine again."

His hand started roaming, and his next kiss was a bit more bold. She regretfully stilled his wandering fingers and took a step away, gasping when her butt came into contact with the cold marble of the sink.

"I'm expecting Margaery any minute—"

"She saw me come up. Pretty sure she's staying down there."

His hand lifted to cup her breast, tenderly cradling it in his palm before circling her nipple with his thumb. Brienne closed her eyes at the streak of heat that flared wherever he touched her, and fought off the urge to cry again. His lips met hers, and she was seized with such desperation that she raked her fingers through his hair and kissed him fiercely. Trailing her hands down his neck, she began to unbutton his Oxford shirt, needing to feel his warm skin.

Jaime hummed against her mouth and helped as best he could, shrugging free of the shirt. He toed off his shoes and stepped free of them when she'd gotten his trousers open. Once he was as naked as she, he spun her around to face the sink, spooning himself around her and rubbing his erection against her backside.

"Ready?" he panted in her ear.

"God, yes," she groaned, and then he was easing into her.

His first few strokes were slow, careful, but she didn't want that, after so long without him. She wanted to feel him, to really know he was back where he belonged: in her home, in her body. In her heart.

"Harder," she commanded, her voice low, and clenched the sides of the sink when he moaned against her shoulder and began slamming into her. "Yesssss."

He moaned again and slid his hand around her hip, down her belly, between her legs. His clever fingers knew exactly where she wanted them, and it was only a few thrusts later that she gasped and arched, head back, crying out his name.

"Brienne," he chanted over and over, pouring himself into her.

They stood there for a few long moments, leaning against each other for support, their legs not quite up to doing the job without help.

"I think I need another shower," she said when she could speak again.

"Nah," he replied, scattering kisses over her shoulder blades. "You're still fresh and sweet and clean. Just a washcloth down below, you'll be fine."

She couldn't help but smile. He pulled away and, like always, they hissed at the sensation of that one last stroke. Brienne propped herself against the sink, still catching her breath.

"I'll grab one, though," he said, and with a last kiss, stepped into the tub and yanked the curtain around it. She wet a washcloth and began to clean herself, then started the process of readying herself for her performance.

"So," he began conversationally, voice raised to be heard over the blast from the shower head. "You didn't think I'd come up this weekend? Why not?"

Brienne finished smoothing on tinted moisturizer and started on eyeshadow. Ramsey's most recent bon mot flashed through her head: "Why do you bother to wear makeup? It's pointless, like putting makeup on a cow: it's a waste of makeup, and just angers the pig."

She looked down at the eyeshadow brush, then up at her reflection, and how little improvement it all made. No matter what she did, she was always going to be just an angry pig. She put the brush down.

"I just thought something else would have been scheduled already, or some emergency would pop up," she mumbled. The makeup might not matter, but she had to do something about her hair or she'd just look like a crazy woman. She squirted serum into her hands and worked it through her curls until they were reasonably tamed.

"Something did," he said, "but I ignored it. From now on, the only thing that will keep me away is if the company is in imminent danger of absolute collapse. Otherwise, it'll just have to wait until Monday."

Brienne found a dry towel and placed it on the counter for him. She couldn't think of much to say in response, since she frankly didn't believe him— he'd said the same exact things a dozen times, over their weeks apart— but settled for, "Good," and slipped from the bathroom to get dressed.

Panties, bra, slim black trousers, silk blouse. Demure earrings. Leather ankle boots. She was just zipping up the last when Jaime emerged from the bathroom, stray droplets gleaming on his skin as he toweled his hair, a golden god descended to slum with the lowly humans for a while before returning to Olympus.

He rummaged through his bag and found fresh clothes. The line of his back, how it tapered to his slim waist and then rounded into his amazing butt, was entrancing and she found herself zoning out as she stared at him, startling when he began to laugh.

"If you keep staring at me like that, wench, we'll never get to the music hall," he teased, stepping into his boxer-briefs. She just stared up at him from where she sat on the edge of the bed, her heart full, but her mouth empty of whatever words she should be saying to him. He cupped her face in his hand and gazed at her, his eyes soft.

"I love you," Jaime murmured, and it sent a shaft of pure agony through her. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into his palm, trying her damnedest not to cry.

"Love you more," she whispered back.

"Not possible." He moved away to put on the rest of his clothes, and she felt like she could breathe again. How she was going to get through this performance, she didn't know. Tyrion was going to glare at her again, but she knew her tempo was going to be off. She might even be off-key, the ultimate in humiliations.

Pathetic, she admonished herself. Master's degree in strings from Juilliard, and she was fretting over managing the basics in a second-rate orchestra in the middle of nowhere—

Brienne nipped that in the bud. Her self-esteem crises always had a downward spiral, where she started off hating herself and moved on quickly to hating everything about her life. It was not productive.

"Let's get moving," she said, forcing a faint smile. "I always do Sansa's makeup."

Sansa, at least, was not an angry pig.


	18. and things we're all too young to know

**Jaime**

It was a strange night, Jaime decided.

Brienne seemed uneasy, and he could have sworn that her playing wasn't as good as usual, though he was far from any sort of expert who could pinpoint that sort of thing. He based it more on her expression, how she moved, and the way Tyrion kept glaring at her like he could set her on fire from the force of his ire.

Then, when the performance was over and he made his way backstage, as he had before returning to New York, he could have sworn that some of the musicians were watching him and… laughing? That didn't make any sense. They'd all gotten along when he'd been there back in January.

As he approached the dressing room Brienne shared with her friends, he heard Sansa's voice.

"Margaery and Dany can help me change and get my makeup off, Brienne," she said. "You should go now, before Tyrion gets here and kicks your butt."

"I'll go see if the coast is clear," said Margery, and stepped out into the hallway. When she saw Jaime standing there, she eyed him with a hostile expression he was frankly unused to seeing a woman direct at him.

Well, any woman besides Cersei.

" _You,"_ she said in a tone that boded ill.

"And you," he replied easily, slipping back into his facade of cool unconcern as he always did when confronted.

Margaery's lip curled in derision. "And me without my shovel."

 _What was her problem?_ he wondered, not answering.

"Marg," Brienne warned from inside the room, but Margaery grabbed Jaime by the arm and began toting him down the hallway. She wrenched open the door of a supply closet, yanked the overhead string to turn on the single naked light bulb, and shoved him inside. Then she stepped in after him, shutting and locking the door behind her.

"Not my first choice for a tryst," he drawled, looking around at the mops, buckets, and rolls of toilet paper. "But I've done it in worse places."

"I don't want to fuck you," she hissed at him. "I want to wring your neck."

"Are you going to tell me why? Or do I have to guess? What do I win if I get the answer right?"

"My foot up your ass," Margery snarled. "Just be quiet and listen to me. You have some nerve coming back here after deserting Brienne for six weeks."

His stomach tightened in shock. "I did not desert Brienne. Not for six weeks. Not even for six minutes."

"Whatever makes you feel better," she snapped, "but it boils down to you making promises, and not keeping them. And it's hurt her badly. She's new to relationships. She doesn't know how they work. How men will swear you mean something to them, and then slither away when they're done."

Fury started to burn brightly beneath his sternum.

"Slither? Maybe the men _you_ date slither away. But when I don't want to date a woman anymore, I—"

 _-I tell them so,_ he meant to finish, but in truth, he'd never had to. When he didn't want to continue seeing a woman, he simply stopped inviting her to join him for dinner or events, and eventually she got the hint—

Oh.

 _Oh._

Oh, god. He _did_ slither. _Had_ slithered, in the past, at least.

"I see that you know what I'm talking about," Margaery said grimly.

But he hadn't slithered in months. Almost a year, in fact, since the last woman he'd dated. And he certainly wouldn't be slithering with Brienne.

"I—" he began, but there was a single _thud_ on the door.

"Margaery," Brienne said from the other side. "Come out here. Now."

She sounded very irate. Jaime wondered if there were something wrong with him, because in spite of the annoying situation in which he found himself, that authoritative tone of hers was pretty arousing.

Margaery shot him one last fulminating glare and yanked open the door. Brienne stood there, with an expression on her face that Jaime had never seen before, impossible to decipher: angry, yes, but also embarrassed and apprehensive and sad. Really, really sad.

"I'm sorry," she told him. "Margaery is… " She just trailed away and sighed.

"Margaery is going to the bar and getting hammered," that woman said, and strode away without a second look at either of them.

"Let's go home," said Jaime, striving for calm.

Brienne nodded. After fetching her things from the dressing room, they walked out to her car. She was silent as she stowed her cello in the Outback's trunk, and the entire way home. It wasn't the punishing silence he'd endured from Cersei his entire life, though. Just a thoughtful, tense one. That was… something?

Margaery had said that Brienne had no idea how to be in a relationship, but Jaime didn't, either. Not really. He'd never been in love before. He wasn't entirely sure he had a grasp on what love _was_. He felt it for Tyrion and Shae, and even a nascent sense of it for the baby that would be his niece or nephew, but for a woman…

He'd had crushes. He'd been infatuated. Both paled to insignificance in comparison to how he felt for Brienne. This wasn't just physical desire and a sense of enjoying himself in her presence, due to finding her amusing or interesting, though he certainly felt all of those thing in spades. No, with her, there was a fierce admiration just for her being _her_ , a contentment just to be in her presence, and the worrying conviction that he might not survive it if she dumped him.

When they were back in her apartment, she put the cello on its stand and turned to him.

"So we should talk about that, I think."

"Yes."

He sat on the butt-sucking couch, expecting her to join him, but she just stood there, knitting her fingers together, staring down at them.

"I'm sorry," she said suddenly, with a brave attempt at a smile. "I haven't done this before, as you know. And I'm so scared one of us will say something disastrous."

"I am, too," he admitted, the knot in his stomach feeling as if he'd swallowed a cement block. "I haven't done it before, either." He, too tried to smile. "Both virgins at this, I guess."

Silence. Then, "What did Margaery say to you?"

"That I'd lied to you by making promises I couldn't keep. That I was ghosting you. And implied that you believed it, as well."

He stared up at her, waiting for her denial, but she said nothing, just kept looking at him, and a dull ache blossomed behind his ribs.

"Brienne. You don't really think I would do that, do you?"

"I don't want to," she said softly. "I really don't. But I don't know what to think, when you tell me over and over that you're coming, and then phone me ten minutes before you're supposed to get here that you can't make it. Or you tell me you'll call, and it turns out to be a text instead, and it's a few hours late."

Jaime took a deep breath, trying to quell the indignation rising in him.

"Why did you think I was breaking up with you? And like that, no less? I know we haven't been together long, Brienne, but do you really think I would do that?" he asked hoarsely, and got to his feet to stand in front of her. "Do you really think _I_ _'_ _m_ capable of doing that? To _you_?"

She took a deep breath. "You promised you'd come back every weekend, Jaime, and then you didn't do it. This is my first time to be in love. I don't know how it works, you know? But I do know that broken promises are basically lies."

He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to process what she was saying. She had a point, but he did not feel entirely at fault.

"Maybe some are. Mine were not, because I never meant them to be untrue. Every single time I said I'd be here, I _meant_ it," he said carefully.

"You knew from the beginning that I have a lot of responsibilities," he continued after a deep breath. "I'm the president of the family company, a company that has existed for centuries. Hundreds of people depend on me for their livelihoods. Tens of thousands of customers depend on me to ensure I get things right for them. If I fuck this up, I'll be destroying the legacy of a dozen generations of Lannisters."

He watched her, hoping to see some sort of concession that he had a point, but there was just that same worried sadness. Frustration make his temper snap.

"So I'm sorry if I can't drop everything to reassure you when you're feeling lonely," he concluded. "You knew I had all those commitments from before I even met you. I couldn't just cancel everything because I met some woman over the Christmas holidays."

As soon as he said it, he knew it was wrong. He hadn't meant it, she hadn't deserved it. It was just an automatic self-preservation reaction, finely honed to be instinctual after three-and-a-half decades of deflecting the verbal slings and arrows of his father and sister and, on occasion, his brother.

Brienne jerked back as if he'd slapped her.

"Couldn't you?" she asked coldly, and then those magnificent eyes flashed. " ' _Some woman_ '?"

He winced. "I didn't mean it like—"

She shook her head. "Forget that. Just tell me why you thought it was okay to keep making plans with me, week after week, only to break them. Who would put up with that kind of arrangement?"

"I think… I'm just used to…" He huffed, irritated at his inability to form coherent sentences in the face of his heightened emotions. "The women I'm used to dating are all very aware of what it's like to run a large company, and how business obligations can spring up, or how bad it can look to cancel an event. It never occurred to me that you wouldn't understand that. That you'd interpret it as some sort of statement of how you're less important to me than the company."

"But I _am_ less important," Brienne said, "just like those other women you've dated were all less important. I'm no more to you than they were, it seems to me. If I weren't less important, you wouldn't think it was acceptable to do it. Not once, or even twice, but _five times_ , Jaime. And at the very beginning of our relationship, too. How am I supposed to have any faith in you— in _us_ — when this is the first thing I learn about you?"

"It's not the first think you learned about me," he said fiercely. "Have you forgotten the rest of me? Is this the only thing that makes me worth anything to you?"

Everything hurt; his head was pounding, his stomach ached, his eyes stung, his throat was swollen, and his chest felt like he'd taken a punch from an MMA fighter. He'd waited all his life for someone to want to be with him because they liked and loved him. Not what he could do for him, but _him_.

Lannisters were never constrained by such plebeian concepts as familial obligation, of course, so he harbored no illusions in that regard and considered Tyrion's affection for him as a pleasant surprise. And still, he'd stupidly tried so damned hard to be exactly what Tywin and Cersei had wanted, hoping with each success and accomplishment that _that_ would be the thing to win their approval. And it never, ever was.

He hadn't had to try with Brienne; he'd just been himself, naturally, and that had been enough.

Or so he had thought.

"Of course it's not the only thing," she protested. "But it's a very _big_ thing, isn't it, Jaime? I need to be able to rely on you, and know I can depend on you. If I'm constantly wondering about you… what's the point?"

"If I'd known you were feeling this way, I'd have done things differently," Jaime shot back. "Made sure you knew you were my priority, since you were attaching so much significance to my actions and choices."

He was feeling a bit savage about how he was being mischaracterized. Could it really be all his fault? Had he made a catastrophic error and now stood to lose her because she was reading so much more into the issue than she ought to? "Why didn't you say anything about this before?"

"Because I was scared of having this exact discussion," Brienne said tiredly. "I was scared of losing you. And then as the weeks passed, and I started feeling like you were more and more distant, I just… couldn't find a way to do it."

"How long were you going to let this go on before you said something?"

A guilty expression crossed her face, and the cement block in his stomach plummeted.

"You weren't going to say anything," he said flatly as realization dawned. "Ever. You were just going to keep pretending everything was fine, letting me think you loved me, when really you think I'm lying, and manipulating you."

"I _do_ love you." Brienne's voice cracked.

"Do you? When you can't trust me? How can I trust _you_ , if you pretend you're fine when you're not? Am I supposed to second-guess myself every minute of every day in case I've done something wrong but you're too scared to tell me?"

"I—" she began, but stopped, looking shocked. She clearly hadn't looked at it that way.

"We really don't know each other at all, do we?" He felt exhausted, like an old dishrag that had been wrung dry, and so, so sad. "We have no idea what we're doing. We're having our very first test of how to be normal people having a normal relationship… and we're failing. We're failing each other already."

She stared at him, her eyes huge, her bottom lip trembling.

"This…" she began, then swallowed. "This might not work, Jaime."

Her words made him feel like someone was cracking his rib cage open.

 _No,_ he thought, _no, don_ _'_ _t do this. Don't say this._

"Let's not make any decisions tonight," he said, feeling desperate. "Let's not say anything we can't fix."

"What do we do, then?" Brienne whispered.

"I'll… I'll go," Jaime said. "To Tyrion's. We can take some time to think about what's next."

She nodded slowly. "That might be best."

They stared at each other for a few endless moments before Jaime sucked in a breath and averted his eyes.

"Can I use your car to go to Tyrion's?" he asked. "I'll get it back to you tomorrow morning."

"Of course," Brienne murmured, and went to fetch her keys.

She was pale as milk, and looked defeated. Weary. It didn't give him even a tiny bit of satisfaction, which was new for him, since he'd always delighted in making his father and sister miserable in payment for the little cruelties they'd put him through first.

No, this was a hollow détente, fraught with disaster.

He couldn't let it end like this.

"I love you, Brienne," he told her quietly, trying to imbue his voice with all the longing he felt for her.

Her face contorted, just for a moment, before she got herself under control again. "I love you, too."


	19. but I love it when

**Author's Note: ****Thank you to everyone who has left a review, I'm so happy that you're enjoying the story so much.**

 **We're winding down- only two more chapters after this.**

.

* * *

.

 **Brienne**

Brienne collapsed into bed and cried herself to sleep. The next morning, she felt hungover and dehydrated, and stumbled around the apartment in search of painkillers, only to find reminders of Jaime everywhere, either in items he left there or memories of him.

The spot on the floor where she'd opened his Christmas present while he watched with such hopeful anticipation that she'd like it. The music gable, where he'd sat and watched her and then kissed her so soundly she hadn't had the strength to withstand his attraction and charm any longer. The kitchen, where they'd cooked together. The dining area, where they'd eaten together.

The bedroom, where they'd had the most stupendous sex, and she'd blurted out how she loved him. And miracle of miracles, where he'd replied in kind.

None of it mattered.

She'd gone into that discussion feeling so sure about herself, so convinced she was right and that Jaime had, at best, been insensitive, and at worst, that he'd been stringing her along as a prelude to splitting up with her.

She hadn't expected to get it turned on her like that, to where she was just as guilty as he of deception. Perhaps, since it appeared to have been that best case scenario, she was even _more_ guilty, because while he'd just been a bit doltish to assume she'd understand, she'd consciously kept her feelings to herself, pretending she was fine when she was absolutely _not_ fine.

 _This is a mess,_ she thought dully. She'd had a chance at love— and not with just anyone, but with a romance-novel-perfect man that basically ticked every box she might have had for her ideal match— and let her insecurities and fear and Margaery's ranting goad her into throwing it away.

And that made an aching void gape open in her chest, as if she'd been carved open and hollowed out. Blindly, she went to her cello, got into position, and began to play.

She played for hours, unaware of which pieces she was forcing upon her instrument, only stopping when a banging on her door knocked her concentration free of her anguished-induced monomania. She set her bow aside, noting that she'd utterly shredded its horsehair and she'd have to make an expensive replacement. Which she could ill afford. The day couldn't possibly get worse.

…or so she thought.

Opening the door, she found Tyrion and Shae standing there. Brienne managed to hold herself together for all of three seconds, and then burst into tears.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she heard Tyrion mutter.

Shae hushed him and steered Brienne around and back into the main room, a gentle push sending her down onto the butt-sucking couch while Tyrion stomped around the apartment doing god-knew-what.

"We dropped Jaime off at the airport," Shae told her quietly, "and brought your car back."

Brienne cried harder.

"He asked us to come get his things so—" She stopped short.

"So…?" Brienne whispered.

"So he wasn't taking up space and imposing on you," Shae finished regretfully.

Brienne, somehow, cried harder.

"He never took up space," she gasped between sobs. "It was all empty, wasted space before I met him."

"You're a fucking idiot," announced Tyrion, dropping Jaime's weekender bag on the floor at their feet. He'd haphazardly stuffed all of his brother's possessions into it with no care whatsoever, a messy jumble that would drive Jaime crazy when he opened it and found his toothbrush stuffed into his dirty boxer-briefs and his capless deodorant spray spritzing itself into the wiring of his electric razor.

"I know," Brienne agreed despondently. "I really am."

"No, I mean, you're _really_ fucking stupid," Tyrion reiterated. "You don't fully appreciate what you've done to Jaime, both good and bad."

"So _tell_ me," she exclaimed. "Tell me! I've hardly spoken to him in the past six weeks, and when he was here over Christmas, he wouldn't say much, just turned on the charm and distracted me so I'd stop pestering him for details. I know something is very wrong with your family, and it's hurt both of you a lot, but I can't work around it if I don't know what it _is_!"

Tyrion sucked in a deep breath and exchanged a look with Shae, then plopped down on the butt-sucking couch.

"Our family," he began, "is a soulless, power-hungry entity that fully believes in eating its own young if it will further the Lannister interests. Failure is not tolerated. Weakness is not tolerated. Anything— or any _one_ — that compromises our ability to gain and maintain power and wealth is despised and eliminated. Usually in a thoroughly awful way, so as to create so much of an impact upon the transgressor that they're too terrified to every try anything like it ever again.

"I committed the grave sin of not only killing our mother while she gave birth to me, but being a dwarf. Our father was disgusted by me. Cersei _loathes_ me. Combined with how horrible it is to be different in a world that demands conformity, and punishes anyone who doesn't obey, my life was hell. The only good thing in it was Jaime. He did the best he could to be a brother to me, in spite of our sister and father.

"In a way, I had it easier than him, because no one ever really expected anything of me. Father would make demands, I'd ignore them, and we'd just move on to my next disappointment.

"But Jaime… he had no such excuse. Father would not accept any failures from him. No excuse was adequate when Jaime couldn't achieve some impossible demand. He got into every Ivy League law school except Harvard, did you know that? But Father didn't talk to him for a month after the rejection letter came.

"He hadn't wanted to be a lawyer, but Father gave him no choice. Casterly Enterprises would be better served if Jaime were a corporate attorney, so that was what he could become. And when he lost his hand, Jaime was so damned relieved, because there was no way he could manage the bar exam, what with all the surgeries and therapies. And by the time he had fully recovered, years had passed and there was little point to it, anymore."

"Tell me about his hand," Brienne all but begged him. _"_ _Please_. I feel like it's the key to understanding him, but he won't say a word."

Tyrion scrutinized her from under the tumble of curls hanging in his eyes, and then huffed out a breath.

"Father and Cersei only spent time with me under the strictest duress, when I was a child," he began, "but once I was older and decided I wanted to make a career out of music, instead of joining them in their quest to gather as much money and power as possible, they washed their hands of me. Only Jaime had anything to do with me, after that.

"We became closer. Life was good, or at least less bad. For a while, that is. We saw each other on the holidays, when he was able to get away from the other two horsemen of the apocalypse. He made me go skiing, and insisted on teaching me how to sail; I dragged him to every part of the Ring cycle. We worked very hard to drive each other crazy."

He flashed her a faint grin.

"It was the first time in our lives we felt a measure of security in another person. Like we had someone we could depend on. So, of course, it could not last. Father forbade me to return to college, like he did every semester, and would not let me have one of the chauffeurs for the day. Business as usual, really. So Jaime did as always, and drove me there, himself.

"We were almost there when some asshole getting a blowjob from his girlfriend crashed into us, so hard that we flipped upside down onto another car. Jaime's hand was mangled, my nose got cut off."

"Cut _off_?" Brienne's eyes popped in amazement. _"_ _Off_?"

He nodded. "Off. They had to use skin grafts and artificial cartilage to form a new one. Anyway, all the bones in his hand were destroyed. He was dragged from the wreckage by Good Samaritans who stopped to help, but the way the car had landed, I was trapped in my seat. And the gas tank had begun to leak, and car we were on top of had caught fire."

Brienne was barely breathing, transfixed by what she was hearing. Beside her, Shae was holding her hand tightly.

"They tried to hold him back, saying it was too dangerous, but Jaime fought free of them and ran back to the car to get me. Even though the bones of his fingers were literally falling out of the flesh of his hand, he didn't stop until he pried me free. And it wasn't a moment too soon, because the car started burning as he began to carry me away."

Brienne put both hands over her mouth in horror at the idea of what Jaime had endured. Based upon what she was learning of his family, the story wasn't going to get any better from there.

"We woke up in the hospital. They were kind enough to keep us in the same room, which is how I learned what happened next, because Jaime has never spoken of it. The damage to his hand was so extensive that they couldn't salvage it, and had to amputate. Father and Cersei had been told about the accident almost immediately, of course, but she was shopping in Paris at the time, and Father couldn't possibly miss golfing with his biggest supplier.

"But eventually there was nothing left in Paris to buy, and Cersei came to inflict herself upon us. She took one look at the stump where his hand had been, spun on her heel, and walked out of the hospital. He didn't see her again until the bandages were off and she could pretend he was whole and normal with a prosthesis because 'she couldn't bear' to look at him 'like that'. That was at least twice as much concern as Father showed, though. He just had his secretary send Jaime flowers. He didn't come to the hospital or phone, not even once.

"The secretary did, though. Quite a few times, actually." He quirked a bitter little smile.

"My dear father and sister were horrified by Jaime's injury. Oh, not because of his suffering and pain, or that he would be partially disabled the rest of his life, but because it was so _unsightly_. Father, in particular, was ashamed that the Lannister heir was now imperfect. He didn't care that Jaime's wrist was rubbed raw by the prosthesis, to the point of bleeding. Neither he nor Cersei cared about how he struggled to relearn how to do everything with his other hand. It was just so _humiliating_ to be seen with him, you see."

The lightness of his tone was almost grotesque in contrast to his grim words.

"Then, about a year after the accident, Jaime confronted Father and Cersei about their behavior toward us. They knew the accident wasn't his fault, or mine, so why were they so furious with him? Father told him that they were angry at how unnecessary his disfigurement had been. That he'd risked himself, and gotten maimed, for nothing."

"But he did it to save you," Brienne whispered.

Tyrion nodded. "For nothing."

Beside her, Shae was silently weeping, tears rolling down her cheeks to fall onto her rounded belly. Brienne gripped her hand hard, needing to comfort her as much as she needed to be comforted. She didn't realize she was crying, too, until she started to drip tears onto her own lap.

"That was it for Jaime," Tyrion concluded grimly. "After that, he gave up on the hope of ever earning their love. He works at Casterly Enterprises because he has to, or the company will fail and the employees will lose their jobs, and Cersei will be poor and even more useless than she currently is."

"Won't he be poor, too?" she asked.

Tyrion smirked. "Jaime prefers to hide it, but he's actually a math genius, and has made a fortune on the stock market totally separate from the company. He could quit Casterly tomorrow and double his assets by noon, if he put his mind to it."

"Why would he hide it?"

"So unbecoming for a Lannister to show enthusiasm for anything academic," he drawled, and sounded so like Jaime at that moment that Brienne felt like bawling her eyes out.

"Jaime gained a bit of power, once he stopped trying to please them, because they knew he could leave at any time. Father needed him to inherit the company and keep the legacy going; Cersei needed him to inherit the company so she didn't have to run it. He's been far happier, ever since, but he's still unhappy. Lonely. Bored.

"This Christmas— when you met him, Brienne— Jaime thought that, maybe, now that Father was dead— and hopefully roasting in Hell— he should make a last-ditch attempt to salvage something in the way of the Lannister family. But Cersei was her usual charming self, as were her husband and eldest son, and he just couldn't take it anymore. He was just… done.

"That's when you met him, and the rest is history." He paused, clearly uncomfortable with how much he'd revealed, but determined to do it right. "We— he and I— we're starved for love, for affection, for acceptance and approval. You don't know how momentous it is for him to say he loves you, or me, or Shae. And to do it so easily. It's not something we grew up hearing or saying."

"It took Tyrion three years before he told me he loved me," Shae murmured. "And then, only because I threatened to leave him if he didn't."

"I'd never said it to _anyone_ before Shae. For Jaime to feel comfortable enough with you to be so open and loving, and after just a few weeks…"

He just sighed.

"For the first time in his life, he wasn't hiding behind his sarcasm, or pretending to be the carefree charming rogue. He was his actual self with you, holding nothing back, being as honest as a Lannister can manage. And you threw it in his face. Accused him of lying and manipulation.

"Ironically, it's probably the first time in his life he _wasn_ _'_ _t_ lying and manipulating the other person. That, I think, is what hurts the most. He did all the 'right' things— he was open, and loving, and everything normal people take for granted when they have healthy relationships, and it still didn't work."

Something _broke_ inside Brienne's chest, she'd swear to it. She stared at Tyrion, her mouth working soundlessly, and then slid off the couch to kneel in front of him, flinging her arms around him and weeping on him.

"Shae," came Tyrion's voice, sounding panicked, "help me."

However, Shae was crying, herself, after hearing that story again. She began laughing at the same time, then, because watching her husband being smothered by a woman twice his size was hilarious to her.

"Be strong, Titi," she told him, giggling, then sniffling. "You can handle it."

He bore it stoically until Brienne released him, sitting back on the couch and curling forward, her forehead on her knees, to sob. She wasn't sure how long she cried, but when she calmed, Shae released her hand to go turn on some lights, as the afternoon sun was setting and the attic was getting dark.

"I have to apologize to him," she croaked, clogged sinuses and sore throat making her sound ridiculous. "I feel horrible. I am an awful person."

"Just a frightened one," Shae told her with a gentle smile. "Love is scary. I have… far more experience than you, with men," she said carefully. There was a complicated story behind those words, Brienne was sure. "And I was terrified when I fell in love with Tyrion."

"I was scared shitless," he said bluntly. "Still am, most days."

Brienne blinked. "But you're married. And expecting a baby. What's to be frightened of now?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Of losing her. There are so many ways I could lose Shae. She could become sick. Get in a car accident of her own. Could have complications with this pregnancy, or the delivery, like my mother did. She could come to her senses and realize what a bum deal she settled for, in marrying me. Or, most likely, I will do something so incredibly stupid that she just can't stand me anymore."

"Tyrion…" Shae said, her voice reproachful but also sad.

He forced a shrug. "This is the real Lannister legacy. Not Casterly Enterprises, or that ghastly old pile of bricks down in Connecticut, but the inability to believe anyone can possibly love us. Whatever you're feeling, Brienne, I promise you, Jaime is feeling twice as bad."

Tears welled up in her eyes, again, as pain and guilt roared through her once more.

"Titi, stop," said Shae softly.

"I'm not trying to hurt her, Shae. She needs to understand, so this doesn't happen again. She'll apologize to him, and they'll make up, but if they have another misunderstanding like this, I don't know if he'll be able to recover. I'm quite sure he'll never be able to open up and trust anyone else again."

"So what can I do?" Brienne could not recall the last time she'd felt so helpless.

"Grovel," was his advice.

"Not helpful," Shae informed him before turning to her. "How did you leave it? Did you break up?"

Brienne should her head. "No. When he left, he said we should take time to think about what comes next."

"That's good," said Shae. "It seems to me like you are both right, and both wrong. You each made assumptions that hurt the other. But you have learned from this, yes?"

"Yes."

God, yes, she had learned. About how easy it was to fall back into her old self-defeating ways. About how fragile her confidence really was. About how her stunted communication skills and fear had hurt Jaime, so much. The look on his face, when he'd left… she never wanted to see that again. The guilt of it sucked away all her strength and she just sat there, limp, lost in thought for long moments.

To their credit, Shae and Tyrion just sat there, waiting patiently for her, and it gave her an idea. She felt better the moment she made up her mind. Lighter, as if a heavy stone had been lifted from her heart. She was going to fight for Jaime. He wouldn't know what hit him.

"I have to make it up to him," she said, standing. She went to her closet and pulled out the same suitcase she'd used on her trip to North Carolina and back, that fateful trip when she and Jaime had met.

"What will you do?" asked Shae.

"I'm going to New York," said Brienne.

"Not until Monday, you're not," griped Tyrion. "Or have you forgotten that we have performances tonight and tomorrow evening?"


	20. you give me things

**Author's Note:** This is the last chapter! An epilogue will come out tomorrow, but this is the conclusion of the story. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who's been following along, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it :)

I'll be starting another Brienne/Jaime story very soon (possibly today), set in show canon, about how I imagine they'll meet up again. I hope you'll all consider following that story, as well :)

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 **Jaime**

The next Monday morning was even more Monday-ish than usual. The grimness of New York City in mid-February, with its slushy streets and dingy yellow streetlights and incessant road noise, did not inspire Jaime to a better mood, nor had spending the weekend in his apartment instead of New Hampshire. Cersei had had the flat decorated a few years ago in charcoal-gray paint and fabrics and dark woods, declaring that it looked masculine and luxurious.

Jaime just found it dark and unwelcoming. He'd never found it comfortable, in fact, but after spending time in the homey abode of a master crap-whisperer, it was nearly intolerable, and he was glad when the weekend was over and he could escape to his office, and if that weren't the most pathetic thing he'd ever heard, he didn't know what was.

The Casterly Building had been in the family for almost two centuries, built onto instead of deserted for larger space once the business outgrew it, because Lannisters would choose tradition over practicality every time. It was something he'd fought a losing battle against, since inheriting his father's presidency in the company.

In addition to that stifling resistance to change, Jaime had inherited his father's secretary, Mrs. Norton. He arrived at Casterly's headquarters in his usual state— dressed, but needing her to buff up his finishing touches, such as buttoning cuffs and tying his tie and making sure his collar lay flat on his neck— and she joined him in his office to do the honors in her usual brisk way.

She had literally dandled him, Cersei, and Tyrion on her knee when they were children, and knew all of his secrets. She'd been the only one to come see him and his brother in the hospital when he'd lost his hand, and Tyrion his nose, apart from Cersei's first and last, very brief, visit. For that alone, Jaime would adore Mrs. Norton forever.

Upon return from Manchester, back in January, he had withstood five entire minutes of her gimlet stare before spilling the details on Brienne. Her motherly reaction of joy on his behalf had almost driven him to tears but he'd manfully borne up under the strain and feigned stoicism, which hadn't fooled her in the least and only amused her. A lot.

A full foot shorter than Jaime, Mrs. Norton peered up into his face as she manipulated his tie into a far more elegant creation than he'd have been able to manage even with both hands. Fortunately, she was as perceptive as she was efficient, so when she recognized the weary disillusion of his expression on this dreary morning, she just asked, "What happened?"

He forced a laugh. "Turns out, being in a relationship is a lot harder than one might think."

"The course of true love never did run smooth," she quipped.

"Look at you, quoting Shakespeare," he said teasingly. "I always knew you were too smart for this job. Why aren't you teaching at Oxford or something?"

"Who'd keep your father, and now you, in line?" she said lightly, and left his office for her own with a lighter step than her age might suggest her capable of.

"Ain't that the truth," he muttered, and booted up his computer.

After the bomb Jaime had dropped on his board of directors Friday morning, it was no surprise that by Monday, his inbox was stuffed with emails expressing varying levels of concern. He wasn't looking forward to going through it but, he considered, his alternative was to sit uselessly in his office and brood about Brienne.

No, he had to keep distracting himself, or the creeping fear that they'd destroyed their love before it had even gone anywhere would fell him.

Message after message said some version of the same thing: some of the senders were concerned over Jaime's declaration that he was changing the structure of how the company was organized so that more people, including himself, could work from home instead of being chained to a more traditional workplace.

But far more of them were frantic about Jaime's second announcement: that, by the end of March, Casterly Enterprises would be conducting all executive functions out of Boston, instead of New York, with an eye toward shifting all operations to Boston over the course of the next few years. Judging by the various levels of hysteria that tinged the emails, it was as if he had informed them he was moving Casterly to Inner Mongolia instead of a mere hour's plane ride to another huge metropolitan area.

In addition to the panicked pleas for him to reconsider and keep Casterly in New York, there were the usual workaday issues that had been forwarded up the chain of command that only Jaime could determine. There were the pleas for donations from various charities, the updates on his stock prices, and no fewer than twenty-seven emails from Cersei, some enterprising soul having squealed to her about Jaime's plans and entreated her to talk some reason into him.

Impressive, for her; she hated electronic communication with a passion, feeling it the responsibility of everyone everywhere to be available at her convenience for her phone calls or face-to-face meetings.

Her emails were all variations on the same theme: demands to know what thought he was doing, what had spurred such a decision, accusations of Tyrion influencing him unduly, outrage at his lack of gaining her approval first, all increasingly shrill as the weekend had proceeded without him replying.

After the first ten, he just deleted them all, then got up to fetch from his briefcase the pashmina Brienne had pressed on him when he'd left New Hampshire in January. He'd taken to draping it over his legs each night, once he was home, to feel closer to Brienne, even admitting to himself that it was perfect in its versatility and she had a point in loving the damned things.

Best of all, it smelled like her, her particular scent like sea air and salt water that always put him in mind of waves curling onto white sand and gulls' cries echoing in the blue sky overhead.

After this weekend, he didn't want to part with it even to go to work for the day. If it were all he'd have of her, after this, then—

He stopped that thought in its tracks.

 _Focus on the positive,_ Jaime told himself. It was a mantra that had helped him keep his sanity when he'd lost his hand, and he dragged it back out whenever he felt his mood sink. He immersed himself in work, to the point that he was surprised when Mrs. Norton arrived with lunch.

The afternoon passed just as quickly, to his relief, and he decided to leave work an hour early, for no other reason than because if he had to look at another email that day, he could not be held responsible for his actions, the impulse to pitch his monitor out the window almost irresistible.

Jaime poked his head in Mrs. Norton's door to tell her goodbye for the day.

"Should I tell your driver to bring the car around?" she offered, hand already lifting the phone receiver.

"No, the weather's good today," he said, winding Brienne's blanket thing around his neck as a scarf. "I'll walk home."

It was only a few minutes past four o'clock; instead of taking the car, he could have a leisurely stroll, stop and get dinner on the way, and still make it home before dark. Then he'd spend an hour or two in the gym. Shower. Go to bed.

The idea that this was what he had to look forward to, of an evening, was more than slightly depressing.

Jaime nodded in response to a few employees' goodbyes as he made his way out of the Casterly building. He sucked in a deep, cleansing breath of cold air once he was outside and directed himself to his favorite Jamaican restaurant. There, he flirted with the cashier— the cook's grandmother— as he waited for his coconut jerk goat to be prepared. It distracted him from gloomy thoughts, for which he was grateful.

Once he was threading his way through the crowd once more, though, thoughts of Brienne inundated him. He kept veering from feeling terrible guilt for his omissions, to fierce resentment at hers. It highlighted how unrealistic he had been toward his relationship with her. He'd gotten so used to being in perfect accord with her, and had been so enamored at what a perfect fit she was for him, during those two blissful weeks they'd had together. It truly shocked him, the idea that he'd feel angry and outraged at her for anything.

One would have thought Jaime would be well used to being disappointed by someone he loved.

Hope truly did spring eternal. Especially when you were a fool who just never gave up, as he should have done years ago, on his search to find—

 _No._ No more thinking that way. _Focus on the positive._

Brienne had not dumped him. They'd left things on, if not a _good_ note, at least not a _final_ note. There was still a chance for them, and nothing short of a restraining order was going to keep Jaime from pursuing that chance.

He was not going to lose Brienne. He was _not_. Not because of his stupidity, and not because of hers.

The intensity of his thoughts was such that, upon arrival at his apartment building, he did a double-take, because there was a tall woman with short, loose blonde curls sitting there, on the wall surrounding the sculpture garden in the entrance courtyard.

 _I might have tipped over the edge from love to obsession,_ _if I_ _'_ _m seeing her wherever I go,_ he thought, but as he drew closer, the resemblance got stronger and stronger until he realized it really was Brienne.

He stopped in his tracks, just staring at her in surprise. He couldn't think of a single reason for her to be there, unless it was to end things with him in a single, decisive blow rather than let things fade away in slow misery.

She was wearing jeans so skinny that he longed to wrap those long thighs around his neck, a bulky ivory fisherman sweater, her riding boots, and a crimson longshoreman's jacket. At her feet was an overnight bag and her violin case. She looked cold, the tip of her nose red, and as he watched, she pulled the lapels of the jacket closed with a shiver.

Whatever problems they might have, however… chemistry was not one of them. As if magnetized to him, Brienne sat up a little, alert, and looked right at him, as if she'd already known he would be standing precisely there.

He didn't move, waiting to see what her reaction would be to see him. When her face lit up, all the muscles that had wound up tight in him relaxed, and he started toward her again.

She didn't just wait there for him, though; she stood and approached him, faster and faster until she was almost running, stopping short just before she would have crashed into him.

"Jaime," she said, and then threw herself into his arms.

He could hear her quick breaths in his ear, feel her soft hair on his cheek, and the scent of her surrounded him. He put his own arms around her, relief crashing through him in a wave.

It felt like forever, and just a moment, that they stood there, embracing. He could hear people whispering and a few giggles as other residents of the building walked by, but the only thing that had any meaning was right there, in his arms.

Brienne pulled back, eventually, and he made himself release her, but it was only so she could kiss him. Her lips were cold, too, but her tongue was warm as it slid against his. He could feel her sigh of relief; he, too, was seized with a sense of gladness that made his knees weak.

 _She loves me - not breaking up - still wants me - why is she here - don_ _'_ _t care, she's here - she's here - she's here_

Jaime drew out the kiss as long as he could without turning it into a prelude to sex. Though he'd love to have sex. But they had things to discuss, first. Things that were more important than sex. Though he was having trouble remembering what they were.

 _Focus, Jaime,_ he told himself.

"Come upstairs with me," he said.

"Okay." She smiled at him, looking so damned happy, just to see him.

After she fetched her things, they got into the elevator, having it all to themselves, and Jaime took advantage of their privacy to kiss her again. She dropped her bag (though not the violin) to the floor and wrapped her arm around his neck, and this time he had no hope of keeping his mind off sex. Not when she was tugging his hair and whimpering into his mouth with every stroke of his tongue against hers.

"Jaime," she panted. "How long is this elevator ride?"

He looked at the numbers over the doors and saw they'd reached his penthouse already, and probably had been just standing there for a while. He grinned and fished out his keys.

The elevator opened directly to his apartment. They stepped out and he watched with amusement as she took in the space, eyes wide and mouth open in shock.

When she turned to him, amazed into silence, he just asked mildly, "Did you forget that I'm rich?"

"Yes, I think I did," she said, her voice faint as she trailed a fingertip over the mahogany console in the hallway. "I'm a little embarrassed, now, to have had you in my shabby place."

"Don't be," he said, pulling her into his arms for a brief hug and kiss. "I'd pick your attic over this mausoleum any day of the week." He stepped back, shrugging out of his overcoat and reaching for hers.

"It's so… echoey. Marble floors, no curtains… Cersei picked it all. Said it was 'sleek and opulent' but it echoes like the Halls of Moria every time I move. Listen."

He slammed the closet door, after hanging up their wraps, and the sound did indeed echo eerily down the hallway.

"The Halls of Moria," Brienne said flatly, like she was struggling to process what he'd said, and keep from laughing at him. "From Lord of the Rings."

Jaime nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised if a battalion of orcs comes out of the bathroom at some point."

He'd been trying to make her laugh, but instead, she just watched him, her lips faintly curled in a Mona Lisa smile.

"It's adorable that you're a nerd," was all she said, but there was a world of affection in it.

He took her hand and led her into his living room. The floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the sun setting over the Hudson River, and from this distance New Jersey actually looked beautiful as streaks of orange and pink lit up the deepening sky beyond the horizon.

"This sofa is wonderful," she sighed as she sank back into the cushions. "It's actually deep enough for how long my legs are."

Jaime sat next to her, turning sideways to face her, watching her look around and appreciate the view. He wondered about her purpose in coming to New York, and how normal she seemed, when their parting on Friday night had not been a comfortable one.

If he had been angry to learn that she was pretending she was fine when she was not, he had no right to do the same thing. There was no point to behaving as if he were light-hearted when nothing could be farther from the truth. He sighed.

"Brienne, I'm happy to see you, of course, but… why are you here?"

She turned back to him. Her gaze was searching, intent, making him feel like she was peeling away the outermost layers of him to peer inside.

"Because I love you," she said at last.

"…that's it?"

Her face shifted to that here-take-my-heart-I'm-not-using-it expression that always slayed him.

"Isn't that enough?" Brienne asked quietly, dropping her gaze to where she began knotting her fingers together.

"It didn't seem to be," he replied, not wanting to alienate her, but their relationship would not survive if they kept hiding the truth behind careful words.

She flinched, making him feel horrible. Truthful was one thing; hurtful, quite another.

"I'm sorry—" Jaime began.

"No, I deserve that," she said, lifting a hand to forestall him. "I should never have kept my worry to myself. I should have told you I was upset. I should have tried to find a way to make things work, so we wouldn't have to be apart. That wasn't fair to you, especially since I didn't know…"

"Know what?"

"Tyrion told me about your hand."

Jaime stiffened. "He had no—"

"I begged him to," she interrupted, but gently. "I had to know, Jaime. I couldn't understand everything without knowing that, too."

She took his forearm and pressed her cheek to it, then shocked him by kissing where it ended abruptly at his wrist while her eyes filled with tears.

"What you did is the bravest thing I've ever heard of. I'm so _proud_ of you, Jaime. I fell in love with you all over again, when Tyrion told me how you saved him." She kissed his wrist again, a tear falling onto his skin. "I don't ever want you to wear a prosthesis again, unless it's really obvious, so that everyone who sees you will know that you're a hero."

His throat thickened. "I'm not a—"

"You are," she said adamantly, passionately. "You _are_. You're Tyrion's hero, and mine. Shae's too. She wouldn't have Tyrion if you hadn't saved him. I wouldn't be working for him in Manchester. You and I would have never met. What you did made all of us possible."

He just stared at her, mute, shocked.

"You _are_ ," she repeated, her eyes holding his with such intensity that he could have sworn he saw those galaxies in them again. "And I should have worked harder, done more, to deserve someone like you."

"Brienne…"

"I'm… I guess I'm a passive person, in general, used to reacting to what others do, instead of acting first. I dumped all the responsibility and effort for our relationship onto you. I shouldn't have accepted it when you said I shouldn't come visit you here, that it would be a waste of my time. I should have come anyway."

She took a deep breath.

"From now on, I'm going to come anyway. Not on the weekends, because of our performances, but Monday through Thursday, I'm going to be here with you. And…"

"And?" Jaime managed, even though he was feeling dazed from the speed with which these revelations were taking place.

"And I'm going to apply for jobs here in New York, so I can be with you all the time."

She reached out to take his hand, clasping it in both her own and resting all three on her knee.

"That'll break Tyrion's heart," he said numbly. "You're his best musician—"

"Don't care," Brienne replied immediately. "He can replace me, but _I_ can't replace _you_. There's no one else like you in the world. Only you. And I'm not letting you go, and I'm not taking any chances with losing you."

It was too much. Jaime put his head back, covering his face with his hand, and began to laugh.

"Jaime?"

He couldn't stop laughing. If it wasn't laughing, he'd be crying. The relief was just too much.

"Jaime?"

He wiped his eyes and grinned at her. "You're not the only one not taking any chances."

She frowned in confusion, the little 'eleven' of concern lines forming over her nose in the way he loved.

"While you were making all these decisions, I made a few of my own."

"Oh?" she asked, suddenly wary.

"One of the reasons I was so busy, when we were apart those weeks, is because I started a restructuring of the company so that I can work from home most of the week, instead of having to be in the office every day."

Her face lit with comprehension. "So instead of just weekends, you could be in Manchester longer?"

"Five days a week," he confirmed with a nod. "But not only that…"

He gave a dramatic pause, for maximum impact, eager to see her reaction to his next news. She poked him with a bony finger to get him talking again.

"I've also begun the process of moving all our executive functions from New York to Boston."

Her breath caught. "Boston? That's only an hour from Manchester."

"Exactly," he said with satisfaction. "So I can just commute to Boston from Manchester instead of having to come down here to New York. I can spend every day with you, not just five a week."

When he studied her reaction, it didn't disappoint; her eyes were shining, the silvery flecks in them glowing like stars.

"You'd really do all this for me?" she whispered. "Are you sure? Because I meant it. I'll come live here in New York with you. Or Boston, or… or Tokyo. I'll follow you to Timbuktu, if I have to." She smiled, a little bashful at her own vehemence. "You've got your own personal stalker, now."

 _Oh, he loved her._ "I've always wanted my own personal stalker."

"No, you haven't."

"No, I haven't, but only because I didn't know they came in the 'tall gorgeous musician' variety. If I'd known that, I'd have ordered a stalker years ago."

"I don't think you can order them," Brienne said, thoughtful. "I think it's just random luck of the draw."

He studied her face, very soberly, all amusement draining away.

"I never thought I was a lucky man," he said. "Things kept going wrong… but I can see now that I was just saving up all my luck so I could use it to get you."

His mouth twisted as guilt rose up in him over his own actions.

"I shouldn't have treated you like the other women I've dated," he told her. "You're nothing like them. Thank god. That's why I was attracted to you in the first place, in fact. Their families are just like mine, more concerned with making money and gaining power than taking care of each other, so they think nothing of it when plans change. There's always an acceptance of being secondary to business matters."

"That sounds horrible," Brienne said quietly, stroking a hand up and down his arm and shoulder.

"It is," he agreed. "I fell back into what I knew, even though what I know is generally horrible and the opposite of how any sane person should behave. I just took for granted that you'd understand."

"I should have tried, at least."

He took her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. "There's not a lot of point in beating ourselves up over how we should have done things differently. As long as we know not to do it again…?"

Brienne nodded vigorously. "I promise I'll always tell you when you've upset me," she vowed. "No matter how much. You'll be begging me to shut up, very soon, I have no doubt."

"I somehow doubt that," he said, smiling at her; no, beaming, really. He felt almost weak with relief.

 _It_ _'_ _s fine - we're fine - she loves me - she loves me - she loves me_

"So now what?" she asked.

"I've been thinking. I won't be able to leave New York for Boston until the end of March, but if you're going to spend Monday through Thursday here, and I'll be up in Manchester from Friday to Sunday, it won't be as bad… I'll have to find an apartment—"

"—not unless you really want to, you can live with me—" she interjected, but he was on a roll.

"—and office space, and come up with transfer packages for everyone who'll be moving there, and—"

She kissed him. As a method of shutting him up, it worked beautifully.

When the kiss ended, he said, "I'm glad you brought the violin. I'm having a bit of a musical emergency. Will you play something for me?"

She smiled, a little surprised. "Of course," she said, and went to fetch the violin where she'd left it in the hallway.

Jaime watched her extract the instrument, enjoying her grace and efficiency of movement as she tucked it under her chin and took the bow in hand.

"What should I play?" she murmured— to herself, he realized. Her face underwent some fascinating contortions as she pondered her choice, and then she lit up in satisfaction upon thinking of what she wanted.

Then she pulled her bow over the strings, and Jaime's breath caught, because within three notes, he had recognized the piece: that same incredible waltz she'd played the first night they had met, in the dingy motel in Virginia.

It sounded different, this time. He closed his eyes, trying to pinpoint what she was doing now that she hadn't then. The tone of it was sweeter, somehow. More tender. The notes still thrummed over him, like a lover's familiar hands, but instead of merely setting fire to his libido, it was like his entire body had gone up in flames.

He realized, suddenly, that she was watching him. It sent a jolt through him, because usually she played with her eyes closed, transported to some other universe where only music and beauty existed. She watched him, and he realized what had changed.

This time, instead of playing to a stranger, she was playing it to the one she loved, and it made all the difference in the world.

Transfixed by her, barely daring to breathe, he watched until the last notes faded away. Carefully, she set the violin down and reached out a hand to him.

"Show me the bedroom," she commanded gently. "I need you."

He led her to the gloomy, dark bedroom, and her presence immediately improved it a thousandfold. They undressed themselves in silence, watching each other's movements, and when they went into each other's arms, it felt like coming home.

They made love slowly, unhurriedly, as if they had all the time in the world, and now, maybe they did.


	21. you should give me wedding rings

**Author's Note:** This is the end! I hope you've all enjoyed it as much as I have.

Just to point something out, to eliminate any possible confusion or questions: Jaime and Cersei have never been anything but siblings in this story. All three of her children are Robert's, not Jaime's. Any tension between them has always been due to her being a nasty and mean person and not because of a romantic and/or sexual relationship.

Curiously, a few of you have expressed concern at how inconvenient it will be for Casterly Enterprises' employees to move to Boston at Jaime's whim. Let me assure you that they'll all come to be hugely pleased with it, since it's cheaper to live there and it's closer to ski resorts and they all love to go snowboarding :D

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I've written a new Brienne/Jaime story, set in TV show canon, speculating how they might (but probably won't because the show's writers hate logic and quality) meet up again in season 8. I'll paste a bit of it at the end of this chapter as a sort of text trailer, in case you're interested :)

Its title is Full Fathom Five and I expect it to be published in the next day or two, in its entirety. Add me to your author alert so you don't miss it!

Thank you all, again :)

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 **B** **rienne**

 _Two Months Later_

Brienne was toweling her hair dry after her post-defense-class-shower when she noticed she'd missed two calls and five texts. Forehead puckering in concern, she checked the texts, smiling when she saw Tyrion's panicked announcement that Shae had begun labor, that the obstetrician— on call for the day— had gone to Maine and would take a few hours to get back, and that Shae was verbally abusing him for 'forcing' her to endure the entire thing.

Then he asked— begged, really— her to come to the hospital and help him. With a sigh, she texted back that she would get there as soon as she could.

It didn't take long to arrive, the gym not being far from the hospital, but it must have seemed like eternity to Tyrion, who was texting her in increasingly frantic language every five minutes. By the time she arrived at the maternity ward, Brienne wasn't running, exactly, but she had moved at a fast clip through the hospital.

She approached the nurse's station, a trifle breathless.

"Which room is Shae Lannister in?" she asked.

"Are you family?" asked the nurse, eyeing her in a way that said she was not impressed.

"Er." What to say? 'The father's brother's girlfriend' was not an especially compelling relation to claim.

"I'm sorry, family only during active labor."

"Oh, thank god you're here," said Tyrion from behind her.

Brienne turned to find him standing there, actually wringing his hands.

"She's my sister-in-law," he blithely fibbed to the nurse. "It's fine."

The nurse gave a suspicious nod and went back to scrutinizing her charts.

"What's wrong?" Brienne asked Tyrion. "Did something go wrong?"

"Physically, everything's perfect. Mentally?" He gave her a wide-eyed look of dismay as they jogged down the hallway together. "She doesn't want to even look at me, since I'm 'the one who did this to her', but she also doesn't want to be alone. You're the perfect solution."

"You want _me_ to be her birthing coach?" Brienne was not sure how she felt about that.

No, that was a lie.

She knew exactly how she felt about that: uncomfortable. She liked Shae very much, but not nearly as well as she'd have to, to watch her push something out of her body.

"Not the whole time?" he said, making it more of a question than a statement. "Just when she kicks me out of the room."

"I'll… try?"

There was a little waiting area by the birthing rooms.

"I'll stay out here," Tyrion said, and gratefully plopped into one of the chair, burying his face in his hands. Brienne felt a pang of sympathy for him. It was a stressful time, especially with how his own mother had died delivering him. She gave him a squeeze on the shoulder, threw back her own shoulders as if heading into battle, and knocked on the door before entering the room.

"Where is that little demon?" Shae demanded the moment she set eyes on Brienne.

"Assuming you mean Tyrion, he's hiding from you in the waiting room," Brienne told her, shedding her jacket and purse on a nearby table.

Shae let out a stream of Spanish obscenities that had Brienne flinching, and she didn't even speak Spanish.

"Have you considered walking around, instead of laying there?" Brienne asked cautiously. "I've heard that it lets gravity do the hard work for you."

Shae turned a fulminating gaze at the nurse who'd been trying to take her vitals without drawing much attention.

"Did you know about that?" Shae asked the hapless nurse.

The nurse flinched. "Um. Yes?"

"Run for your life," Brienne advised, and the nurse snatched up her chart and fled. "Alright, then, Shae, out of bed. We're going to take a walk."

Shae obediently started to clamber from the bed, but paused. "What if I have a contraction? I don't think I'll be able to keep standing."

"I'll catch you," promised Brienne.

Shae eyed her, then nodded, seeming to take confidence from Brienne's sturdy frame. Brienne found her another johnny coat to wear over the back opening of the first one, so as to not flash her butt to the world, and with an arm around her waist, guided her out of the room.

Tyrion leaped to his feet. "Where are you going?"

Shae hissed like a cat and he backed away, wary.

"We're going for a walk," Brienne explained. "I won't leave her for a second."

"I'll come with you—"

" _No, you will not."_

Shae's word was final; Tyrion sat down again, watching dolefully as his wife waddled down the hallway with Brienne dancing attendance.

"I can't believe women have more than one child," Shae muttered as they approached the end of the hallway.

"I can't believe they have even one," replied Brienne, infusing her comment with a humorous tone, but kind of actually meaning it. So far, it looked horrific.

Shae slanted her a mischievous look. "You'll find out soon enough, I expect."

Brienne blushed. "It's… it's a bit early for that, don't you think? Jaime and I haven't known each other that long."

"I know what that sort of gleam means, in a man's eye," said Shae. "Jaime's got that 'I want to have babies with you' gleam."

The blush deepened. Brienne could feel the heat emanating from her face. "I—"

Whatever she'd been about to say was forgotten when Shae groaned and her legs buckled. Brienne moved her so she rested back against Brienne's front, supporting her weight while keeping her upright.

"You're good at this," gasped Shae when she could speak again. "Had a lot of practice as a midwife?"

Brienne eased her back onto her feet again, once she felt certain Shae could stay up on her own.

"Had a lot of practice helping drunks get home," she replied with a grin. "Learned the hard way that it's best to keep them vertical. Way less barfy."

"I have to worry about the mess coming out of the other end, instead," Shae said with a laugh, and the comment proved prescient, because it wasn't long after that that her water broke.

Brienne swept Shae up, bridal-style, into her arms and strode back down the hall toward the nurse's station.

"Clean up on aisle five," she told them, jerking her head back to indicate where they'd left the amniotic puddle.

She saw that Jaime had arrived, by then, and her heart gave that same glad leap in her chest it did every time she saw him. He was sitting next to his brother, deep in conversation, but looked up at their approach. His mouth dropped open at the sight of them, which Brienne had to admit was probably pretty weird.

Tyrion noticed he was no longer listening, and turned to see what Jaime was grinning at, then blanched when he saw them coming up the hallway.

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

"Water broke," said Brienne, succinctly.

"I've got my own knight in shining armor, here," Shae announced.

"She's _my_ knight in shining armor," said Jaime, possibly joking but looking actually very serious about it. "Back off."

"Right now, she needs a doctor, not a knight," Brienne told them, pushing past to enter the room and deposit Shae on the bed.

Fortunately, the obstetrician was almost done her journey back from Maine, and within an hour, had arrived. A plump, motherly older woman with frizzled graying hair, she shooed Brienne and Jaime out to the waiting room while saying, "This is good news, good news! I _love_ when the water breaks after contractions start!"

Brienne went back to the waiting room and collapsed onto the chair Tyrion had vacated and looked up at Jaime. It happened that today was one of his Boston days, instead of working at home, so he was wearing one of the exquisitely tailored suits she loved peeling off of him when he returned in the evening. This one was gray, a color that made his eyes look a smoky, mossy green, as they were when they made love, instead of the usual brighter emerald.

His smile began to fade, and his expression turned hungry.

"You need to stop looking at me that way, wench," he growled softly, making things clench deliciously within her.

"What way am I looking at you?" she asked breathlessly.

"Like you want to suck me off right here in the waiting room."

A flash of heat speared her chest. "I do."

Jaime swore, closing his eyes, and removed his hands from his pockets so his jacket fell over the front of his trousers more.

"I swear you do this to me on purpose," he muttered, sitting next to her.

"I really don't. I just can't help it." She bumped her shoulder against his. "As if you don't turn me on in public all the time, as well. On purpose."

"Of course I do," he said, "but when you get worked up, you can hide it. I can't."

"Doesn't feel like I hide much." She always turned bright red, and her eyes went glassy, and her breath went funny so her voice sounded weird.

"Pfft," Jaime said. "You can pass that off as indigestion. I can't pass an erection off as anything but an erection."

That got her thinking about sex with him again— specifically fellatio, since he'd mentioned it— so when their gazes met, it was almost like an electric current passed between them.

" _Stop_ ," he pleaded. "Those eyes of yours. I can't function when you look at me that way."

"I'm sorry, love," Brienne said, taking his hand and putting it on her knee, caressing it with her fingertips. "I really didn't mean to make a problem for you."

He brought her hand to his lips for a kiss before replacing them both on her knee. "You never make problems for me. I'll take an ill-timed erection any day. It means you still want me."

She blinked at him. _"_ _Still_? Jaime, it's only been five months. How could I have gotten tired of you already?"

"I don't count those first six weeks," he said grimly.

"You should. I count them, because I loved you for all of them."

He stared at her in silence a long moment, his eyes soft and amazed, lips gently parted. He looked at her a lot, like that, to Brienne's extreme pleasure, because it meant he was carried away by his love for her in that moment. When he looked at her like that she could almost believe she was beautiful.

The only thing that saved her from being almost crippled by awkwardness when he did it was the knowledge that she did it to him all the time, too, if Margaery's vocal disgust was to be trusted: gaping witlessly, wide-eyed, wondrous at the force of her feelings for him.

"Wow," said a youthful voice, and they looked away from each other to see a pair of teens, girl and boy, staring at them.

The girl continued, "Uncle Tyrion told us that you and your girlfriend moon over each other in public all the time, but I didn't believe him."

The boy added, very cheerfully, "You two look like you're in one of those romantic movies where someone dies from cancer in the end."

Jaime grinned. "Ah, two particular Lannister talents: no tact, and poor timing. Brienne, this is my niece, Myrcella, and nephew, Tommen. I called them about the baby after Tyrion called me."

"Uncle Jaime sent a car to bring us here from our boarding school," said Tommen.

"I was surprised you'd both want to come," Jaime commented.

Tommen shrugged, looking anywhere but at them, and mumbled, "It got me out of gym class."

Myrcella attempted a smile before giving up.

"We never see anyone in the family anymore," she said quietly. "Mother and Father are always sick—" Brienne took that to be her diplomatic way of saying 'drunk' "—Uncle Tyrion's up here… you were in New York until just a few weeks ago—"

"And we don't want to see Joffrey. Ever," interjected Tommen before going back to studying the wallpaper.

"So we talked about it and decided we wanted to see you and Uncle Tyrion more. Especially now that Aunt Shae is having the baby. We want to know him, too."

"Her," said Tyrion from the doorway. They all turned to see him standing there, looking shellshocked, his eyes wet.

"Already?" Jaime asked, standing.

"Already." Tyrion did not look remotely ready for fatherhood. "Come in and meet her."

Jaime herded Brienne and the children before him, and they all packed into the room. Shae sat propped up in the bed, a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. She looked weary, but happy, and her smile encompassed all of them.

"Look what I did," she said proudly, tilting the baby so her tiny, red, wrinkled face could be seen.

"Aw," said Tommen.

"She's so small," Myrcella cooed.

Jaime's hand found Brienne's and he squeezed it, almost too hard, but she didn't care.

"That went quickly," she said instead.

"Births where contractions begin before the water breaks are usually fast and easy," said the doctor as she prepared to leave. "Plus Mrs. Lannister did everything the right way to prepare for it. She hardly needed me at all."

The doctor shot Shae a grin.

"Now, I'll leave the family to enjoy the new baby, but I'll still be around if I'm needed." And she bustled out.

"What will you name her?" Myrcella asked, then batted her eyelashes. " 'Myrcella' is an _excellent_ name, in case you haven't quite decided yet."

They all smiled.

"Joanna," Tyrion said, his voice a little hoarse. Beside her, Jaime jolted, just a little, just enough to tell Brienne it had surprised him. "I wasn't able to know our mother, but… I hope she would have been pleased."

"She would have been, yes," said a voice from the doorway, and they all turned to find a woman standing on the room's threshold. Her outfit was designer, as was her face: already lovely, but carefully assisted to defy the ravages of time, such as they might be at her age, which was not very far advanced that Brienne could see.

She stepped closer, and the smell of vodka wafted gently into Brienne's nose.

"Cersei," Jaime said, a terse greeting.

"Jaime," Cersei replied, sardonic. Her gaze, just as green as Jaime's but hard, like glass, passed over her children, both of whom looked nervous to have been found there by her, and from them to Brienne. Those eyes swiftly, unerringly, found where her hand was locked with Jaime's, fingers intertwined.

The corner of Cersei's mouth twitched, as if she couldn't decide whether to smirk or laugh, before traveling to her other brother and finally to Shae and the baby she held.

"I didn't expect you to come," Tyrion said into the silence.

"I didn't expect you to ask me to," Cersei replied coolly.

Tyrion shrugged. "We're Lannisters."

"So we are." She walked to the bed and gazed down at the baby, whom Shae shifted so Cersei could get a better look.

Joanna yawned and smacked her lips, squinting blearily with cloudy blue eyes at the confusing world around her. Cersei held out a finger, and the baby reflexively curled tiny fingers around it. Cersei did smile then, a smile of genuine sweetness that transformed her face into something almost angelic.

Jaime and Tyrion stared at their sister with a strangely mingled sense of sorrow and longing. They both knew what she was capable of being, Brienne realized. Jaime, in particular, was probably remembering what his twin had been like before their father had tainted her. They three could have helped each other through the loss of their mother, and the cold distance of their father, but instead she'd only made them all more miserable. Brienne felt a pang of pity for her, thinking of how much joy and love she'd missed out on, and how much pain she'd caused.

As if she could read Brienne's thoughts, Cersei looked up from Joanna and caught her gaze. She straightened and fixed Brienne with a gimlet stare. Too late, Brienne realized that Cersei had seen that pity, and Ramsey's quip about the pig careened through her mind.

 _No point in feeling pity,_ Brienne thought, a trifle hysterically. _It_ _'_ _ll just anger the pig._

"So you're Jaime's girlfriend," Cersei drawled, that same horrible tone of voice Jaime used when he was trying to be infuriating on purpose (as opposed to when he was infuriating by accident).

"You look very cozy together," she continued. Her smile, so lovely before, turned sharp, gleaming like a naked blade. "When's the wedding? I do hope I'll be invited."

Brienne thought that would send Jaime's temper into the stratosphere, but instead he only turned to her and smiled, and unlike his twin's, it wasn't knife-like at all.

"That's a great idea," he said, his gaze soft. "Tomorrow? Next day?"

Alarm and terror shot through Brienne. "That's— but we— _Jaime_ —"

"Looks like your Amazon doesn't want to marry you, Jaime," said Cersei, a false pout of sympathy on her glossy lips.

Again, Brienne thought Jaime would at the very least tense up at his sister's blatant attempt to rile him, but instead he just grinned fondly, squeezing her hand.

"She _is_ very Amazon-like, isn't she?" He sighed happily. "That's another outfit I want to see you in, wench— if you won't do Xena, how about Wonder Woman?"

Brienne felt a volcanic blush rise on her face. "I told you, no costumes," she informed him, but faintly, completely weirded out by the Lannister family dynamic.

"It's not that I don't want to marry Jaime _ever_ ," she continued, meeting Cersei's derisive gaze as directly as she could manage. "It's just that we've only known each other for five months. I don't want to jeopardize our relationship by rushing into anything."

When she chanced a look at Jaime, she found him giving her that startled damn-I-really-love-you look again.

"I'm not hearing a 'no'," he said, his voice a little rough.

"It's too soon, is all. Maybe after a year?"

"I accept."

"What?"

"Your proposal. I accept."

"No, I didn't—"

"It's decided. We'll be married on the anniversary of our meeting. December twenty-second, everyone. Mark the date."

"I meant you could _ask_ after a year."

"Wench, all these _rules,_ " he griped. "What am I supposed to do until then?"

Brienne scoffed. "You act like I'm banishing you to pine in solitude until the stroke of midnight on the fated day. Jaime, we live together. You'll see me constantly between now and then."

"I'll still pine," he said, looking mournful. "I'll pine my _ass_ off, Brienne, see if I don't."

"A tragedy," she said, stifling a giggle. "since I like it right where it is."

"Um…" said Tommen.

Brienne and Jaime extracted themselves from the little bubble they always found themselves in when they started bantering.

The boy and his sister both had expressions of slightly-grossed-out amusement on their faces. Tyrion and Shae were openly laughing at them. Cersei's lip was curled in derision. Joanna just yawned again.

"Well, that's all I can stand," Cersei muttered, and beelined for the door. "Myrcella, Tommen… let's get you back to your school."

"Can't we come home to New York with you?" Tommen asked, a whine in his voice. "It's almost the weekend."

"Of course not," his mother told him briskly, her voice fading as they walked away.

"Congratulations, Aunt Shae, Uncle Tyrion," Myrcella said from the doorway. "I'm glad we could see you, Uncle Jaime, and be here to meet Joanna." She paused, and then added, "And Aunt Brienne, too."

With a cheeky grin, she dashed after her mother and brother.

Jaime turned to Brienne, triumphant. "See? Everyone thinks it's a great idea."

Brienne blushed hotly again.

"Jaime, stop teasing her," Shae commanded. "Come hold your niece."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, and approached the bed. Shae handed Joanna to him, and he carefully cradled the baby's head in his hand while propping the rest of her tiny body on his forearm.

 _He would make an incredible father,_ Brienne thought, seeing the intent, incredulous way he stared down at Joanna, and felt a lump form in her throat. A pang of yearning, for a baby of her own, with him, lanced her chest and she blinked furiously to keep any threatening tears at bay.

Tyrion tried to take Joanna from his brother, but Jaime rotated away from him.

"Mine," he said, using his back as a shield so he could continue holding her.

"Get our baby back from Jaime before he makes a break for it," said Shae. "I didn't do all that work so he could kidnap her."

Brienne extracted Joanne from Jaime's clutches, fully intending to hand over the little bundle to her father, but she couldn't help keeping the baby to herself for just a few moments.

Joanna looked, frankly, like an old boxing mitt, red and creased. She made little snuffling sounds as she slept. Brienne fell quite thoroughly in love with her, touching the little nose and minuscule fingers, and looked up at Jaime, needing to share the moment with him.

 _I want to do this with him,_ she thought fiercely. _I want to give him a child._

He was already looking at her, and she saw the same yearning on his face.

"I understand," she said suddenly to Shae, who with Tyrion had been watching them quietly. "I understand why we do it, now."

Shae, along with Jaime and Tyrion, looked confused for a moment. But then Shae twigged and a knowing, sympathetic smile lit up her face.

"That gleam in the eye is a powerful thing. I knew you wouldn't be able to stand it for long," she said, with just a touch of smugness. "You've got a gleam of your own, too."

"What are you two crazy women talking about?" Tyrion asked mildly.

"None of your business, nosy," his wife informed him.

Tyrion rolled his eyes and accepted Joanna back from Brienne. Kisses were exchanged all around, and then Brienne left with Jaime.

"What was that about understanding and gleams?" he asked as they exited the hospital into the pouring late April rain. She extracted an umbrella from her bag and opened it over them.

"Shae and I were wondering why women ever have babies, since it seems like such an awful experience. I had said I didn't understand why they did it."

She glanced over and saw the comprehension on his face. He stopped walking, huddling closer to her under the umbrella.

"And you do, now?"

"All I could think about, when you were holding Joanna, was how I wished she was ours," Brienne said softly. "Maybe in two or three years—"

"That long, wench?" He cupped her face in his hand, smoothing the pad of his thumb over her cheek. "What can I do to get you to move your timeline up a year or so?"

She felt pinned by his gaze, like a butterfly to velvet.

"I don't want what happened before to happen again," she said slowly. "We need time to get used to each other, to learn more about how to be in love. We're new to each other, and to being in a relationship. Or at least, being in a healthy one. What if we skip an important step, and everything goes wrong? I don't want to hurt you again."

Brienne brought up her free hand to caress his face, as well. "I won't take any chances with you, Jaime."

He stared at her with that expression she loved, all wide eyes and parted lips and amazement. She thought he might ask her to marry him, again, and this time, she wasn't sure if she'd be able to refuse.

But he just flashed her his famous grin. "I hate when you're right."

"No, you don't." She faced forward once more, charging ahead through the puddles toward her car so quickly he was forced to jog a little to keep up. "Because when I'm right, you benefit. _Your_ plans are the ones that get skewed, if you recall."

"I maintain that Ramsey's little mishap was due to circumstances outside my control," he insisted. "And had nothing to do with any actions that might have been taken on my part."

Brienne unlocked the Outback's doors and gave him a level look over the roof of the car. "Right."

"I am wrongly persecuted," he informed her in the tone of one who has suffered greatly the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He crossed his arms over his chest, feet planted wide, as if he intended to make a last stand then and there.

"Is that right? Tell you what: the sooner we get home, the sooner I can make it up to you." She couldn't hold back a little smirk. "Didn't you mention something about getting sucked off, earlier?"

Jaime's face went almost comically surprised, then eager. Without a word, he got into the car and was buckled up, eyes front and hand and wrist in his lap like an obedient schoolboy, by the time Brienne even opened her door.

She laughed most of the way home, then again when Jaime's enthusiastic reception of her efforts were expressed at a volume so loud that Margaery started banging on her ceiling in protest.

"Margaery puts up with so much from us," Brienne gasped between peals of laughter as he tugged her up the bed to lay on top of him. "Poor girl."

"Poor girl?" Jaime harrumphed. In a quick move, he flipped her over so he was on top, and began kissing his way south. "I still haven't paid her back for abducting me into a closet."

"How do you plan on punishing her?" Brienne asked, then moaned when he gave each nipple a kiss before moving down her belly.

"Thought I'd make her miss some sleep," was his reply as he got comfortable between her legs and settled her knees over his shoulders. "I figure if I keep you screaming, she'll be up all night."

Brienne shared her doubts that he'd be able to accomplish it. Jaime took that as a dare, and threw himself whole-heartedly at the challenge.

By the next morning, Brienne had screamed herself hoarse.

And Margaery had served them with an eviction notice.

.

THE END

.

* * *

.

Full Fathom Five

.

"Goodness doesn't save anyone," said Brienne, very quietly.

"Except you," he told her. "Your goodness has saved you, over and over, just as it has saved me. In ways you don't even realize."

* * *

Podrick took a deep breath. "When she heard you had died, my lord…"

"I'm sure she was sad," Jaime said, into the silence that fell after the squire had trailed off. "We're friends. Friends are sad when they lose each other."

The idea of Brienne's death sent a shock through him, as strong as a body blow from a war hammer.

"It was more than sad, my lord," Podrick said.

* * *

"I am not your conscience, you foolish man," she grumbled, even as she fought to keep herself from smiling. "I just remind you that you have one."

* * *

"Stop being an ass," Brienne muttered at his side.

Daenerys looked at her, a bit shocked.

"Not you, Your Grace, of course," Brienne hastened to say. "Him."

* * *

"Apologies," Tyrion said, glancing between him and her with an expression of dawning realization that Jaime did not like.

* * *

"You've got that look again," Brienne accused. "What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," he almost snarled, and then got himself under control again. "Have your visit. I'll see you later."

* * *

"Thing that kept me going was the hope of seeing you again," Tormund continued.

And now she was tense again. He noticed, and laughed.

* * *

"Ser," she began, but Tormund snorted.

"None of that," he said. "Like my friend Clegane, I'm no ser."

She quirked a brow in surprise. "You befriended Clegane?"

"Someone had to. Can you think of a man more in need of friends?"

* * *

When she opened her eyes again, Jaime was standing there, with an expression on his face she'd never seen before, and which she had no hope of interpreting.

* * *

Podrick chose that poor time to enter the tent, his eyes huge and concerned. He opened his mouth to speak, but they both turned on him.

"Get out," said Brienne.

"Don't come back," said Jaime.

* * *

When he was silent, she spun to face him, snapping, "Say something. Don't make me wait to hear you laugh—"


End file.
